Source Transmit Antenna Selection for MIMO Decode-and-Forward Relay Networks

Abstract

Transmit antenna selection (TAS) is usually applied to multiple- input multiple-output (MIMO) systems because it does not require additional radio frequency (RF) chains which are quite expensive. In MIMO decode-and-forward (DF) relay networks, both source-destination and source-relay-destination paths should be simultaneously considered to find an effective source TAS (STAS). In this paper, a new STAS is proposed based on both channel state information and transmission scheme for the MIMO DF relay networks. It is also shown that the proposed STAS which selects M-SS antennas among M-S transmit antennas at the source can achieve full diversity regardless of the value of M-SS. Simulation results show that the proposed STAS has better average bit error probability (BEP) performance than other STASs. Also, the proposed STAS with M-SS = 1 has lower cost, complexity, overhead, and BEP than the STAS with M-SS > 1 using full-rate full-diversity space-time block codes with the same total transmit power.