Performance evaluation of multihop decode and forward cooperative relaying

Cooperative relaying emerged as an effective method to combat the negative effects which are resulted from multipath fading, shadowing effects and path loss. Bit Error Rate (BER) has been analyzed and simulated for two different cooperative relaying, Amplify and Forward (AF) and Decode and Forward (DF), using MATLAB assuming Rayleigh flat fading channel. Practical implementation of the multihop DF cooperative relaying is built using software defined radio (SDR) platform consists of GNU Radio, Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) and Single Board Computer “ODROID”. BER analysis is done to verify the proposed system performance. Based on the results of this work (simulation and practical implementation), BER of cooperative relaying communication is better than that of direct communication.