Position Dependant Power Allocation Strategies in Cooperative Relay Networks

In fading wireless channels, relays are often used with the aim, of achieving diversity and thus overall performance gain. We use amplify and forward (AF) and decode and forward (DF) at the relay and optimize the power allocated to the relay, under total transmit power constraint, to maximize the instantaneous SNR and thus achieve improved throughput and BER performance. We compare the performance of the AF and DF protocols based on their positional BER and throughput and notice that our power optimized schemes outperform, existing ones at certain areas. Finally we also identify the region where relaying would provide performance gains for both the protocols