Statistical properties of two hop relay systems with polarization diversity

Wireless relaying has been proven to be an efficient transmission technique which increases wireless network range, capacity and overall system performance. However, in the realistic communication scenario, having non-identical channels' parameters, the worst channel limits relay system performance. In order to improve the characteristics of this bottleneck link, we propose implementation of polarization diversity. This particular paper deals with analyses of statistical properties of two hop amplify-and-forward relay systems with variable gain amplification. Furthermore, it is assumed that there exists line of sight between the communicating nodes, i.e. communication channels are described with Rician fading statistic. Thus, with the polarization diversity being implemented, diversity channels are characterized as two correlated and non-identical Rician fading channels. In order to enable performance analyses of a such relay system, we develop a novel analytical model for describing system's received signal to noise ratio (SNR) statistical functions, such as PDF (probability density function) and CDF (cumulative distribution function). It is shown that the obtained statistical functions are applicable to various fading scenarios described with different Rician K factors and average SNRs, as well as different level of diversity signals correlation and cross-polar discrimination.