On the Ergodic Capacity of Amplify-and-Forward Relay Channels with Interference in Nakagami-m Fading

Integrating relaying techniques into cellular communications sheds new light on higher capacity and broader coverage. However, applying relaying techniques in practice has to take into account important issues such as co-channel interference (CCI). In this work, a generalized framework for the ergodic capacity analysis of dual-hop fixed-gain amplify and forward (AF) relaying systems in the presence of interference is presented. New expressions for the ergodic capacity are derived considering transmissions over independent but not necessarily identically distributed Nakagami-m fading channels in the presence of a finite number of co-channel interferers. Our results establish that the ergodic capacity is dominated by the source-relay interference power and that it improves slowly with the average signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) increasing. It slightly deteriorates, however, with a larger Nakagami-m fading parameter for interference channels. Furthermore, our results offer an analytical insight into the key impact of relay placement on performance. Our new ergodic capacity expressions could therefore provide a very practical/low-cost performance optimization tool for relayed-communication system designers.