Outage Probability Analysis for Systems Using Amplify-and-Forward Relays with Direct Link

Abstract: In this paper, we analyze the outage probability of the system where a cluster of amplifyand-forward (AF) relays are employed to assist the reception at the destination terminal. In particular, our model assumes that the channels between the source and the relay terminals and that between the source and destination terminals have the same statistics, and the relay nodes only have the statistical knowledge of the first hop channel. Our main contribution is the derivation of the exact closed-form expression for the outage probability of the system. In addition, the diversity order of the system is investigated.