Performance of Asynchronous Amplify-and-Forward Cooperative Relay Networks

In wireless cooperative networks, the asynchronism between the relays can be a source of diversity which is similar in its essence to the multipath diversity of frequency selective channels. In this context, an asynchronous two-relay two-hop cooperative wireless network using the amplify-and-forward protocol is studied. The outage probability in the high signal to noise ratio (SNR) regime is derived for integer and real relative delay between the two relays. We also show that the diversity multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) of the network is d{r) = 2(1- 2r) for a non-zero relative delay.