Adaptive relay selection method for asynchronous amplify and forward cooperative communications

In this paper, we propose a new adaptive relay selection method named as Adaptive Best Relay Assessment (ABRA) for cooperative communication with amplify and forward (AF) relaying. ABRA is based on two relay selection criteria which are cascaded channel gain coefficient and cascaded time offset in source-relay-destination (S-R-D) channel. Our simulation results demonstrate that the channel gain coefficient is the best criteria at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regimes and time offset at high SNR regimes. Therefore, we combine these two criteria to select best relay for all SNR values. Finally, ABRA achieves the best bit error rate (BER) performance in asynchronous AF cooperative communications for three different path gain ratios 30 dB, 0 dB, and -30 dB.