Optimum Receiver Performance With Binary Phase-Shift Keying for Decode-and-Forward Relaying

Cooperative diversity through decode-and-forward (DF) relaying is an effective method for improving the performance of mobile wireless systems. We consider here the performance of a cooperative diversity system in which the relay employs the DF protocol to transmit data from a source to a destination using binary phase-shift keying (BPSK). A flat Rayleigh fading environment with statistically independent links is assumed. The optimum receiver for this system is presented, and from the decision rule, the end-to-end symbol error probability (SEP) is derived. Numerical results on the SEP are obtained and compared with those for a suboptimum receiver, which does not need the channel state information of the source-to-relay link.