Outage probability analysis of multi-hop cooperative satellite-terrestrial network

This paper analyzes the performance of multi hop cooperative satellite-terrestrial system through amplify and-forward (AF) cooperative protocol. Independent and non identical channels are assumed between source and destination. The maximum ratio combining (MRC) technique is used at the destination to combine the signal received from the direct path and the relay paths. The performance of the proposed system is examined in term of outage probability. We derive closed form expressions for the joint probability density function (PDF) and the moment generating function (MGF) of bounded signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the relay paths. The MGF based approach is used to determine the outage probability. The proposed theoretical solution is compared with Monte Carlo simulations and they seem to agree well.