Outage Probability versus Fairness Trade-off in Opportunistic Relay Selection with Outdated CSI

We analyze the existing trade-offs in terms of system performance versus fairness of a cooperative system based on opportunistic relay selection (ORS) and with outdated channel state information (CSI). In particular, system performance is analytically evaluated in terms of outage probability, and the fairness behavior is assessed based on the power consumption at the different relays. In order to improve the fairness behavior of ORS while keeping the selection diversity gain, we propose a relay selection mechanism where the relay with the highest normalized signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is selected for relaying the source’s information. The proposed strategy is compared with existing relay selection strategies by adopting a novel graphical representation inspired by expected profit versus risk plots used in modern portfolio theory. As shown in the paper, this strategy allows operating the system in more favorable points of the outage versus fairness region.