Performance Evaluation of Amplify-Quantize and Forward Protocol for Multi-relay Cooperative Networks

Abstract

Fading which occurs during the process of information transmission can significantly degrade system performance. The cooperative communication system is a well-known diversity technique that is able to mitigate the impact of fading. The relay protocol is the core of such systems. In this research, we evaluated the performance of amplify-quantize and forward (AQF) relays using a hybrid of two protocols: amplify-and-forward (AF) and quantize-and-forward (QF). The outage probability and throughput of multi-relay cooperative networks were derived, and computer simulation was used to evaluate the impact of a number of parameters on the performance of the AQF relay for multi-relay cooperative networks. We also compared the outage probability and throughput of AF, QF, and direct link networks. The outage probability of AQF decreased as the number of relays increased, whereas the throughput increased. We demonstrated that amplification values and quantization levels have a significant impact on the performance of AQF multi-relay networks. Overall, AQF performed better in terms of outage probability and throughput than AF and QF, for multi-relay cooperative networks.