Outage Probability for Multi-Hop Full-Duplex Decode and Forward MIMO Relay

Abstract: In this paper, a multi-hop (MH) decode-and-forward (DF) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay network has been studied. To consider a more realistic scenario, Full-Duplex (FD) operation with Relay Self-Interference (RSI) is employed. Assuming that the MIMO channels are subject to Rayleigh fading, a simple and compact closed-form outage probability expression has been derived. The key assumption to derive this result is that the mutual information of each channel could be well approximated by a Gaussian random variable. In order to obtain the resultant outage probability, a new excellent accurate approximation has been obtained for the sum of Wishart distributed complex random matrices. Numerical Monte Carlo simulations have been performed to validate our result. These simulations have shown that, for low and medium interference regime, FD mode performs better than Half-Duplex (HD) mode. On the other hand, when RSI increases, HD mode can outperforms FD mode.