Half-Duplex or Full-Duplex Relaying: A Capacity Analysis under Self-Interference

Abstract: In this paper multi-antenna half-duplex and full-duplex relaying are compared from the perspective of achievable rates. Full-duplexing operation requires additional resources at the relay such as antennas and RF chains for self-interference cancellation. Using a practical model for the residual self-interference, full-duplex achievable rates and degrees of freedom are computed for the cases for which the relay has the same number of antennas or the same number of RF chains as in the half-duplex case, and compared with their half-duplex counterparts. It is shown that power scaling at the relay is necessary to maximize the the degrees of freedom in the full-duplex mode.