Multi-hop asynchronous cooperative diversity: Performance analysis

Mobile users with single antennas can use spatial transmission diversity through cooperative space-time encoded transmission. In this paper, we present an end-to-end performance analysis of two-hop asynchronous cooperative diversity with regenerative relays over Rayleigh block-flat-fading channels, in which a precoding frame-based scheme with packet-wise encoding is used. This precoding is based on the addition of a cyclic prefix which is implemented as a training sequence. We derive, for equal and unequal sub-channel gains, the bit-error rate and the end-to-end bit-error rate expressions for binary phase-shift keying. We also present the performance of the frame-error rate and the end-to-end frame-error rate. Finally, comparisons between three system configurations, differing by the amount of cooperation, are presented. Furthermore, simulations show that the analytical results are correct at all SNRs.