The Amplify-and-Forward Half-Duplex Cooperative System: Pairwise Error Probability and Precoder Design

In this paper, an exact asymptotic pairwise error probability (PEP) is derived for a half-duplex cooperative system employing an amplify-and-forward (AF) protocol. When compared with the PEP of a traditional multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system, the “diversity gain” for the cooperative system is no longer just a simple exponential function of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), rather, it involves the logarithm of the SNR. The term diversity gain function is used to designate this characteristic of the PEP. The coding gain, on the other hand, is found similar to that for the MIMO system and is proportional to the determinant of the autocorrelation of the error matrix. Based on our analysis and observations, we propose a design of unitary precoder for the cooperative system to achieve the full diversity gain function. For the case of a 4-QAM signal being transmitted, we further optimize the coding gain and arrive at a closed-form optimum precoder. Simulations indicate that our proposed precoder designs greatly improve the performance of the cooperative system.