Error Analysis of SSK in DF Cooperative Relaying With Selection Combining

This paper deals with the performance analysis of space shift keying (SSK) in a cooperative environment with a decode and forward protocol based relay and selection combining employed at the destination. In this system, the destination selects the source to destination (S-D) link or source to relay to destination link based on the maximum Euclidean distance between the SSK constellation points of the S-D and relay to destination links. The end-to-end average symbol error probability (SEP) of the system is derived using order statistics approach (OSA), and a novel approach called combined order statistics approach (COSA). The closed-form expression of the end-to-end average SEP for the system is derived using COSA. The analytical results obtained through OSA and COSA exactly match with the simulation results for binary SSK (N
_t
= 2). For non-binary SSK (N
_t
> 2), the analytical results found using OSA and COSA are loosely bounded at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and tightly at high SNR with the simulation results.