Performance Analysis of Multihop Wireless Links Over Generalized- $K$ Fading Channels

The performance of multihop links is studied in this contribution by both analysis and simulations when communicating over generalized-
K
(
K
_G
) fading channels. The performance metrics considered include symbol error rate (SER), outage probability, level crossing rate (LCR), and average outage duration (AOD). First, the expressions for both the SER and outage probability are derived by approximating the probability density function (pdf) of the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) using an equivalent end-to-end pdf. We show that this equivalent end-to-end pdf is accurate for analyzing the outage probability. Then, the second-order statistics of LCR and AOD of multihop links are analyzed. Finally, the performance of multihop links is investigated by either simulations or evaluation of the expressions derived. Our performance results show that the analytical expressions obtained can be well justified by the simulation results. The studies show that the
K
_G
channel model and the expressions derived in this paper are highly efficient for the prediction of the performance metrics and statistics for the design of multihop communication links.