An incremental hop selection scheme for amplify-and-forward multi-hop networks

This letter proposes an incremental hop selection (IHS) scheme which improves network coverage while preventing spectral efficiency loss in half-duplex amplify-and-forward (HD-AF) protocol based multi-hop networks (MHNs). In contrast to the fixed N-hop networks, the proposed IHS scheme increases the number of hops only when the current selected path cannot support a performance threshold. Since the proposed scheme uses minimal time phases to satisfy the constraint, the spectral efficiency can be improved. Furthermore, we evaluate the outage probability and average spectral efficiency performance over Nakagami-m fading channel. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the existing multiple relay schemes and the derived evaluations are valid.