Performance of source transmit antenna selection for MIMO cooperative communication system based DF protocol: Symbol error rate and diversity order

In this work, we study the performance of a single relay Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) cooperative communication system based on Decode and Forward (DF) relaying protocol for two strategies using transmit antenna selection at the source. The first strategy uses one antenna between the relay and the destination, and the second strategy uses Space Time Block Coding (STBC). All channels follow the Rayleigh fading distribution. We derive the expression and Upper Bound for Symbol Error Rate (SER) for M-ary Phase Shift Keying (M-PSK), and the diversity order for both strategies. The analytical results show that the second strategy performs better than the first one for the same diversity order and the same Rate R.