On the Diversity of Linear Transceivers in MIMO AF Relaying Systems

In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on designs and analyses of various relay-destination transceiving schemes, such as zero-forcing (ZF), minimum mean squared error (MMSE), and maximum information rate (MIR) criteria, in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying systems. In the first part of the paper, we suggest a new framework for the transceiver designs utilizing a decomposable property of the error covariance matrix to give a general insight on the system and make the analysis more tractable. Then, in the second part of the paper, we provide an in-depth analysis on their diversity performance. Our analysis embraces two different scenarios, namely, the diversity-multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) and the diversity-rate tradeoff (DRT). First, we derive compact closed-form expressions for the DMT through tight upper and lower bounds. Then, we observe that while our DMT analysis accurately predicts performance of the ZF and MIR schemes, the MMSE-based designs exhibit a complicated rate-dependent behavior and, thus, are very unpredictable via DMT for finite rate cases. Thus, second, we highlight this interesting observation and characterize the diversity of the MMSE schemes at all finite rates. This leads to closed-form expressions for the DRT which reveals relationship between diversity, spectral efficiency, and the number of antennas at each node. The DRT analysis compliments our work on DMT, and thus, the paper provides a complete understanding on the diversity of MIMO AF relaying systems.