Performance Analysis of Two-Hop OSTBC Transmission over Rayleigh Fading Channels

A two-hop amplify and forward (AF) relay system is considered where source and destination are each equipped with multiple antennas while the relay has a single antenna. Orthogonal space-time block coding (OSTBC) is employed at the source. New exact expressions for outage probability in Rayleigh fading as well as symbol error rate (SER) expressions for a variety of modulation schemes are derived. The diversity order of the system is evaluated. Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate the accuracy of the analyses presented. Results that can be extended to relay systems with a direct source-destination link are also highlighted. To put the results in context, the two-hop system performance is then compared to that of a MIMO point-to-point system. Finally, the new analysis is applied to evaluate two-hop system performance as a function of relay location.