Efficient suboptimal transmit antenna selection for MIMO relay channels

Application of MIMO technology in cooperative communications results in many advantages such as high data rates, better reliability and coverage. A drawback of MIMO technology is its high computational complexity and high cost because it uses more antennas and RF chains. A remedy for this drawback is antenna selection technology. This technology attempts to select the best antenna based on the channel state information (CSI). Some transmit antenna selection methods have been proposed in the literature for MIMO systems. Suboptimal antenna selection has been proposed to reduce the required computation to determine the best antenna as well. Optimal and suboptimal antenna selection has not been investigated perfectly for MIMO relay systems. In this paper we propose a suboptimal transmit antenna selection for MIMO relay system which has low computational complexity and we compare its performance with optimal transmit antenna selection and other suboptimal transmit antenna selections.