On the performance of distributed space-time coding with selection relaying and beamforming for two-path successive relay network

Two-path successive relaying is used as a method of transmission for recovering the bandwidth loss of conventional relay networks. In this paper, a new beamforming method is employed alongside the proposed distributed space-time coding (DSTC) transmission scheme in a two-path successive relay network which enjoys SNR-based selection relaying protocol. A closed-form expression for the end-to-end bit error rate (BER) of the system is derived. Regardless of the fading in inter-relay channel, the proposed scheme ensures that full rate and full diversity can be attained in the presence of decoding errors at the relay nodes. Simulation results, show a significant power saving about 2.5 dB at BER (10−4) in comparison to other conventional methods.