Performance Analysis of Turbo Codes and Distributed Turbo Codes in Buffer-Aided Relay Systems

In this paper, we investigate the performance of a relay selection scheme in a buffer-aided multi-relay network with coded transmissions. We consider: (1) two different coding schemes, i.e., Turbo codes and distributed Turbo codes (DTC) and (2) quasi-static Rayleigh fading channels, where all the links are independent but asymmetric. For each of the aforementioned schemes, we analyze the performance of the system in terms of the average throughput and average delay. In addition, simple and explicit approximations of the asymptotic throughput for infinite buffer size and the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime are obtained. Our analysis of the asymptotic throughput provides the maximum achievable diversity gain of the system, and the accuracy of the derived analytical framework is assessed when compared to the Monte-Carlo simulations.