Statistical Joint Antenna and Node Selection for Multi-Antenna Relay Networks

This paper investigates the antenna selection and relay node selection issues for multi-antenna relay system. Based on the channel statistics, optimal selection criteria for antenna and relay node are derived respectively, aiming to maximize the ergodic capacity. We first discuss the statistical antenna selection in the single-relay scenario, and then the joint antenna and node selection in the multi-relay scenario is exploited. Simulation results show that the proposed statistical optimal selection provides significant selection gains. For the antenna selection in high signal-to-noise ratio regime, the achieved capacity based on the derived statistical criterion is close to that based on the instantaneous channel knowledge. In addition, the system can benefit from a moderate increase of relay number with node selection, compared to the transmission with all nodes used.