Distributed Switch and Stay Combining with Partial Relay Selection over Rayleigh Fading Channels

Switch and stay combining (SSC) is an attractive diversity technique due to its low complexity and compatibility to resourceconstrained wireless networks. This letter proposes a distributed SSC for partial relay selection networks in order to achieve spatial diversity as well as to improve spectral efficiency. Simulation results show that the performance loss (in terms of bit error probability) of the proposed networks relative to partial relay selection networks with selection combining is not substantial. key words: switch and stay combining, partial relay selection, selection combining, decode-and-forward (DF), Rayleigh fading