Performance Evaluation of a Wireless Cooperative Network with Maximal Ratio Combining Technique

Abstract

Research on wireless communication is on the rise due to its capability in improving communication in terms of spectrum efficiency, power and communication reliability. In wireless network, power is consumed mostly in the process of data transmission, hence, the need for cooperative relay protocol and technique to improve systems’ performance through power management and quality of service (QoS). Although, there are various cooperative protocols which include: amplify-and-forward, decode-and-forward among others. However, by using these cooperative protocols, the amount of power consumed and QoS still require improvement. Thus, in this work the quest for incorporation of Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC) technique with the Decode-and-Forward (DF) relay protocol in cooperative network. The cooperative network with DF protocol considered consists of the source, destination and relay(s) nodes. The MRC was incorporated at the destination just to combine the received signals from the relay nodes. Moreover, the system’s simulation was carried out by using MATLAB R2020a and evaluated using bit error rate and power consumption as the performance metrics. The obtained results showed that the QoS and power consumption of the considered cooperative network was considerably improved when MRC was employed in the network in comparison with an existing work.