Repetition-Based Non-Coherent Multi-Hop Relaying in Block Rayleigh Fading

A new repetition-based multi-hop transmission with non-coherent detection is proposed. The symbol error probability (SEP) of this system is derived for both amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) relaying schemes. It is shown that the repetition-based non-coherent AF relaying achieves diversity order equal to the number of repetitions, while the repetition-based non-coherent DF relaying does not achieve diversity order. In addition, throughput of the proposed systems is evaluated. Repetition does not enhance the throughput of the DF relaying systems, whereas it improves the throughput of the AF relaying systems for small and moderate values of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).