Antenna/relay selection for coded cooperative networks with AF relaying

In this paper, we consider antenna/relay selection for coded cooperative networks in an effort to improve their end-to-end performance by improving the detection reliability at the relay nodes. Considering amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying, we analyze a previously proposed distributed coded cooperation scheme in conjunction with antenna/relay selection. Specifically, we derive upper bounded expressions for the bit error rate assuming M-ary phase shift keying (M-PSK) transmission. Our analytical results show that the maximum diversity order of the system is maintained for the entire range of symbol error rate of interest, unlike the case without antenna/relay selection. Several numerical and simulation results are presented to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed scheme.