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On the Performance Gain of Hybrid Decode-Amplify-Forward
Cooperative Communications
We investigate the performance of adaptive decode-forward (ADF), amplify-forward (AF), and hybrid decode-amplify-forward
(HDAF) relaying protocol. Specifically, we derive the closed-form expression of symbol error probability (SEP) for these three
relaying protocols. For the AF protocol, we derive a simpler and more tractable final result than previously published work.
Furthermore, analyzing the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime, we derive an asymptotically tight approximation for SEP.
The approximation is used to assess an important aspect between the three different relaying protocols, i.e., the SEP performance
gain of HADF over the two conventional relaying schemes ADF and AF. It is shown that the performance gain of HDAF over ADF
and AF significantly depends on the relative value of channel conditions between source-to-relay and relay-to-destination links.
Interestingly, it is shown that HDAF has no benefit compare to the two others if the relay is located close to the source. In contrast,
the performance gains of HDAF over the ADF and AF scheme are remarkably large as the relay moves nearby the destination.
Specifically, the numerical results given as well as our analysis indicate that for QPSK modulation, HDAF outperforms ADF and
AF with a performance improvement by 5 dB and 6 dB, respectively.
Copyright © 2009 T. Q. Duong and H.-J. Zepernick. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons
Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited.
By having the relay perform soft decoding and forward the Relay
reliability information at the output of its decoder to the
R
destination, this hybrid scheme cleverly combines the merit
of both AF and DF mode.
In this paper, we focus on a cooperative communica- hSR hRD
tion scheme with hybrid decode-amplify-forward (HDAF)
protocol combining the AF mode and ADF mode with
hard decision and study its symbol error probability (SEP) hSD
performance over Rayleigh fading channels. Instead of
S D
remaining silent during the second-hop transmission if the
signal is corrupted as in the ADF protocol, the HDAF scheme Source Destination
can increase the performance by having the relay perform in
the AF mode. When the relay has full knowledge about the Figure 1: Cooperative communications with three terminals.
instantaneous fading channel of the source-to-relay link, it
can operate in channel state information (CSI)-assisted AF
relay mode. Besides, when only the channel mean power of
the first hop is available at the relay, semiblind AF relay is 2. System and Channel Model
considered. In this paper, we focus on CSI-assisted AF relays
and Rayleigh fading channels for all links. Let us consider the specific half-duplex cooperative relay-
Our contribution is summarized as follows. In [10], the based wireless system with three terminals as shown in
SEP performance of CSI-assisted AF relay was obtained from Figure 1, where the direct communication between the
the moment-generating function (MGF) of the harmonic source S and destination D is assisted by the relay R. The
mean of two independent exponential variables. As a result, communication occurs in two hops. During the first-hop
the MGF expression is given in integral form, containing transmission (broadcasting phase) spanning one symbol-
the hypergeometric function. In contrast, in this paper, interval, the source S sends the symbol to the relay R and
we derive the simple MGF formulas including only ele- destination D. In the second-hop transmission (relaying
mentary functions, without introducing any hypergeometric phase) lasting one symbol-interval, for the DF mode, the
functions. We further show that our result is numerically relay terminal decodes the message and forwards it to the
identical but provide a simpler mathematical expression destination. For the AF mode, the received signal from
compared to the works in [10]. This finding enables us the source-to-relay link is retransmitted with an amplifying
to calculate asymptotically tight approximations for SEP of parameter G to satisfy the power constraint at the relay (i.e.,
the AF protocol. Recently, the SEP approximation for AF equal power allocation between S and R). In this paper, to
relays has been investigated in [11]. It has been shown that simplify the analysis we only consider the orthogonal AF
although both formulas, that is, our approximation and [11, (OAF) protocol, that is, the source S remains silent in the
(20)], are derived independently they can be expressed in relaying phase. In contrast, a nonorthogonal AF protocol
a similar form, only with the difference at the scale value. (the source S continues to transmit in the relaying phase)
Interestingly, we demonstrate that our SEP approximation which improves the performance compared to the OAF
for the AF protocol is tighter than the work given in scheme has been investigated in [12–14]. Finally, the destina-
[11]. tion combines the signals from two hops transmission using
These findings lead to deriving the performance gain a maximum-ratio-combining (MRC) scheme to enhance the
of HDAF over ADF and AF systems. We show that the reliability. We assume that the channels of all links induce
gain of HDAF over ADF and AF depends on the relative quasistatic fading, that is, the channel remains constant for
values of channel quality of source-to-relay and relay-to- the duration of a frame and changes independently to a new
destination link. When the relay is placed halfway between value for each subsequent frame. Furthermore, we restrict
the source and destination, we observe an improvement of our attention to the ADF protocol as the relay does not
1 dB and 1.5 dB in SEP performance of HDAF scheme over propagate the error message to the destination as in the FDF
ADF and AF, respectively. Specifically, it is shown that for scheme.
QPSK modulation HDAF can increase SEP performance by The received signals at the destination and relay, respec-
5 dB and 6 dB, respectively, compared to ADF and AF as the tively, during the broadcasting phase are given as
channel quality of relay-to-destination link is much better
than that of source-to-relay link.
The remaining parts of this paper are organized as fol- ySD = hSD st + nSD ,
lows. In Section 2, we briefly review the system and channel (1)
model for cooperative communications. In Section 3, we ySR = hSR st + nSR ,
then derive the associated SEP performance gain in the high
SNR regime. Numerical results are provided in Section 4 to
verify our analysis. Some discussion and future work have where st is the transmitted signal at the source with the
been addressed in Section 5. Finally, Section 6 concludes the average transmit power per symbol Ps . Depending on the
paper. relaying operation during the second-hop transmission, the
EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking 3
received signals at the destination for ADF and AF mode, 3. Symbol Error Probability and
respectively, are given as follows: Performance Gain
ADF
yRD = hRD st + nRD , In this section, we derive closed-form expressions for SEP
(2) of M-PSK modulation with three relaying protocols, that
AF
yRD = hRD GySR + nRD . is, ADF, AF, and HDAF, by applying the well-known MGF
approach [15, 16]. We further show very tight approxima-
In (1) and (2), the notations hA , yA , and nA , A ∈ {SD, SR, tions for SEP, induced from the numerical results given
RD}, represent the fading channel magnitude with the in Section 4, which help to assess asymptotic behavior of
channel mean power ΩA , received signals, and additive white SEP in the high SNR regime. In practice, the decoding
Gaussian noise (AWGN) with variance N0 , respectively. It decision at the relay is determined by checking the cyclic
is noted that all random variables hA ∼ CN (0, ΩA ), where redundancy check (CRC) of a frame. However, in this paper,
CN (0, ΩA ) denotes the complex Gaussian random variable it is assumed that this decision is made symbol by symbol for
with zero mean and variance ΩA , and nA ∼ CN (0, N0 ) mathematical tractability of SEP derivation. Denoting Pc as
are statistically independent. At the destination, the received the probability that the relay correctly decodes the symbol,
signals from the source and relay are combined together we have [15, 16]
using the MRC technique.
π −π/M
In case of the ADF protocol, if the relay correctly decodes 1 g
the message, it will be forwarded to the destination during Pc = 1 − ΦγSR dθ, (9)
π 0 sin2 θ
the relaying phase. Then, the instantaneous SNR of the MRC
output is given by where g = sin2 (π/M) and ΦγA (s) is the MGF of γA defined as
1
γADF = γSD + γRD , (3) ΦγA (s) = EγA exp −γA s , (10)
where γSD and γRD are the instantaneous SNR of source-to- where Ex {·} is the expectation operator over the random
destination link and relay-to-destination link, respectively. variable x.
Otherwise, the relay remains silent, hence, in this case we
have 3.1. Adaptive Decode-Forward Relay Protocol. By defining
1 2
Pr{γADF } and Pr{γADF } as the average SEP associated with
2
γADF = γSD . (4) the events that the relay correctly and incorrectly decodes the
symbol transmitted from the source, respectively, the average
For the AF protocol, as stated earlier, the amplifying SEP of the ADF protocol can be written as
parameter G is chosen based on the power constraint
1 2
between the two phases. In this paper, without considering SEPADF = Pc Pr γADF + (1 − Pc )Pr γADF . (11)
the power optimization problem, we assume the relay
1 2
consumes the same amount of power as the source does in From the expressions of γADF and γADF given in (3) and
the first hop. In case of available instantaneous CSI at R (CSI- (4), respectively, along with the fact that γSD and γRD are
assisted relay), an amplifying parameter G can be formulated statistically independent, we have
as [10] π −π/M
Pc g g
−1 SEPADF = ΦγSD 2 ΦγRD dθ
1 π 0 sin θ sin2 θ
G2 = |hSR |2 + , (5) π −π/M (12)
γ0 1 − Pc g
+ ΦγSD dθ.
where γ0 = Ps /N0 is the common SNR of each link without π 0 sin2 θ
fading [5]. Hence, the instantaneous SNR after MRC for CSI- Moreover, by substituting (9) in (12), we obtain the SEP of
assisted AF protocol is expressed as [10] ADF as follows
γSR γRD π −π/M
γAF = γSD + . (6) 1 g g
γSR + γRD + 1 SEPADF = ΦγSD ΦγRD dθ
π 0 sin2 θ sin2 θ
π −π/M
For the second term in (6), it is somewhat difficult to find 1 g
+ ΦγSR dθ
the CDF and MGF. Fortunately, it can be tightly bounded in π2 0 sin2 θ
the form of harmonic mean of two independent exponent π −π/M
random variables as [10] g
× ΦγSD dθ (13)
0 sin2 θ
γAF = γSD + z1 , (7) π −π/M
1 g
− ΦγSR dθ
where π2 0 sin2 θ
γSR γRD π −π/M
g g
z1 = . (8) × ΦγSD ΦγRD dθ.
γSR + γRD 0
2
sin θ sin2 θ
4 EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking
By assessing the SEP expression of ADF given in (13) at the asymptotic approximation of Φz1 (s) in (A.10), a tight
large SNR, we observe that the negative term is much smaller approximation of SEPAF in the high SNR can be obtained as
compared to two positive terms as there are three MGF values follows:
included in the last term. Therefore, eliminating the last term
α 1 1 1
(negative term) of (13) leads to the SEP approximation SEPAF ≈ 2 2 + . (20)
πγ0 g ΩRD ΩSR ΩSD
π −π/M
1 g g Remark 1. In [11], the SEP of the AF protocol has been
SEPADF ≈ ΦγSD 2 ΦγRD dθ
π 0 sin θ sin2 θ approximated in the high SNR regime using the McLaurin
π −π/M series expansion of the probability distribution function
1 g (PDF) of γAF given in (7). Specifically, for M-PSK mod-
+ ΦγSR dθ (14)
π2 0 sin2 θ ulation and Rayleigh fading channels for all links, the
π −π/M SEP approximation for the AF protocol derived in [11] is
g
× ΦγSD dθ. rewritten in terms of our notations as follows [11, (20)]:
0 sin2 θ
3 1 1 1
Since hA ∼ CN (0, ΩA ), A ∈ {SD, SR, RD}, it is obvious SEPAF ≈ + . (21)
8γ02 g 2 ΩRD ΩSR ΩSD
that γA = γ0 |hA |2 obeys an exponential distribution with
parameter 1/γ0 ΩA and as a consequence the MGF of γA can Examining the two expressions of approximated SEP given
be written as in (20) and (21), we can see that although both formulas
−1 are derived independently they produce a similar form, only
ΦγA (s) = 1 + γ0 ΩA s . (15) with the difference at the scale value. In the next section, we
numerically show that our approximation (20) is tighter than
Also, at the high SNR regime, that is, γ0 1, the MGF of γA , (21) deduced in [11].
by omitting the unit value in (15), can be approximated by
−1 3.3. Hybrid Decode-Amplify-Forward Relay Protocol. With
ΦγA (s) ≈ γ0 ΩA s . (16)
the HDAF relaying scheme, the relay operates in DF mode
Eventually, from (14) and (16) the approximation of SEPADF if it can correctly decode the message from the source,
is obtained as otherwise the relay acts in AF mode. Let us denote Pr{γAF }
as the average SEP associated with the event that the relay
1 α β2 incorrectly decode the source’s symbol, hence, the SEP in this
SEPADF ≈ + , (17) protocol can be expressed as
πΩSD γ02 g 2 ΩRD πΩSR
1
10 log10 (SEP)
π −π/M
1 g
+ ΦγSR dθ (25)
π2 0 sin2 θ Diversity order = 2
π −π/M
g g
× ΦγSD 2 Φ z1 dθ.
0 sin θ sin2 θ
Using the fact that ΦγSD (s) ≈ (ΩSD γ0 s)−1 and the approxima-
tion of Φz1 (s) given in (A.10) of the appendix, we can tightly 10
GB = (log10 SEPB − log10 SEPHDAF )
asymptotically approximate SEPHDAF as 2
High SNR (dB)
1 α αβ 1 1
SEPHADF ≈ + + .
πΩSD γ02 g 2 ΩRD πΩSR γ0 g ΩSR ΩRD B ∈ {ADF,AF}
(26) HDAF
100 100
Relay is close to the destination
QPSK QPSK
10−1 16ΩSR = ΩRD ΩSR = ΩRD
10−1 Symmetric topology
Symbol error probability
10−2
Relative error
10−3 10−2
10−4
10−3
10−5
10−6 10−4
5 10 15 20 25 30 10 15 20 25 30
SNR (dB) SNR (dB)
QPSK
ΩSR = 16ΩRD
We consider the SEP of AF protocol for QPSK modulation
Relay is close to the source
versus average SNR ranging from 10 to 30 dB (medium to 10−1
high SNR regime) as the relay is located half-way between
Relative error
Appendix
Derivation of MGF of
Random Variable z1 Given in (8)
10−2
Based on (8), the CDF of z1 can be given by
γSR γRD
10−3
Fz1 (z1 ) = Pr ≤ z1 = EγRD Fz1 |γRD (z1 )
10 15 20 25 30
γSR + γRD
SNR (dB)
z1 γRD
= EγRD 1 − exp −
Our approach γ0 ΩSR γRD − z1
The approximation reported in [11]
1
Figure 8: Comparison of two approximations for the case that relay =1−
is located close to the destination. γ0 ΩRD
∞
z1 γRD γRD
× exp − − dγRD .
(DMT) for all the classes of DF protocols. Clearly, employing z1 γ0 ΩSR γRD − z1 γ0 ΩRD
DDF in the HDAF scheme is an interesting topic for our (A.1)
future research.
In this paper, we use CRC to perform error detection The lower limit of the integral in (A.1) comes to the fact
at the relay. This type of error detection codes is widely that γRD is always greater than or equal to z1 (since z1 =
used in research on cooperative communications. However, γSR γRD /(γSR + γRD ), it is easy to see that z1 ≤ γRD ). Taking
as the channel of source-to-relay link is poor, to avoid a the differentiation in (A.1) with respect to z1 , the PDF of z1
high undetected error probability at the relay, we need to is given by
increase the CRC’s bits which results in an extra amount
of redundancy. An alternative practical approach based
on Forney’s rule has been presented in [18]. It has been 1
pz1 (z1 ) =
shown in [18] that CRC can be replaced by the bounded γ02 ΩSR ΩRD
distance decoder for error detection. The replacement of ∞ 2
CRC by DDF with bounded distance decoder is another γRD
× 2
direction for future work on the performance gain of z1 γRD − z1
HDAF.
Together with conventional performance metrics such z1 γRD γRD
× exp − − dγRD .
as SEP, DMT is also widely applied to effectively assess γ0 ΩSR γRD − z1 γ0 ΩRD
and compare existing communication systems. Recently, the (A.2)
DMT of several relay protocols has been extensively studied
in [12–14, 18]. It would be interesting to derive the DMT
of HDAF to investigate its improvement over ADF and AF Let x = z1 /γRD and for the sake of simplicity denote γA =
protocols. γ0 ΩA with A ∈ {SD, SR, RD}. Then, (A.2) can be rewritten
as follows:
6. Conclusions
1
1 z1 z1 z1
In this paper, we have investigated the hybrid scheme pz1 (z1 ) = 2 exp − − dx.
γSR γRD 0 x (1 − x)
2 γ SR (1 − x) γ RD x
between fixed decode-forward and amplify-forward relay
protocol, namely HDAF. For the AF relay protocol, we (A.3)
have derived a simpler and more tractable final result
than previously published work. This finding enabled us Hence, the MGF of z1 can be expressed as
to calculate the asymptotically tight approximation for SEP,
leading to deriving the performance gain of HDAF over ADF ∞
and AF systems. We also compared the SEP performance Φz1 (s) = exp(−sz1 )pz1 (z1 )dz1 . (A.4)
among these three schemes. It has been shown that HDAF 0
EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking 9