Power allocation in decodeand-forward cooperative networks via SEP minimization

Abstract—In this paper, the problem of optimal power alloca-tion among the relays in two-hop decode-and-forward cooperative networks is considered, and a new power allocation scheme which minimizes the average symbol error probability under limited total power of all relays and limited maximum powers of individual relays is developed. It is shown that the corresponding power allocation optimization problem is convex and, therefore, can be efficiently solved using interior point methods. Moreover, an approximate closed-form solution in the form of water-filling is also developed. Simulation results confirm the improved performance of the proposed power allocation scheme over other schemes. Index Terms—Power allocation, decode-and-forward relay net-works, cooperative communications, convex optimization. I