Impact of RF Impairments in Cellular Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks

This paper analyses the impact of RF impairments in a new wireless environment where relays are introduced to improve performances. Thanks to a simulation chain supporting theoretical RF impairments models, different techniques are evaluated. The transmission chain can simulate amplify-and-forward or decode-and-forward protocols in either simple relaying or cooperative scenarios. The results of these simulations show BER degradations versus several realistic sets of RF impairments.