The packet error rate (PER) performance of multi-hop STBC based cooperative and diversity relaying systems are studied. These systems consist of a source, a destination, and two relay stations in each hop. From in-lab experiments, it is confirmed that the cooperative relaying system has better PER performance than the diversity relaying system with highly correlated channels.

The end-to-end packet error rate (PER) performance of a multi-hop cooperative relaying system is discussed in this paper. In this system, the end-to-end PER performance improves with the number of hops under certain conditions. The PER performance of multi-hop cooperative networks is analyzed with the state transition technique. The theoretical analysis reveals that the PER performance can be kept almost constant, or even improved, as the number of hops is increased. Computer simulation results agree closely with the analysis results. Moreover, to confirm this performance characteristic in an actual setup, an in-lab experiment using a fading emulator was conducted. The experimental results confirm the theoretical end-to-end PER performance of this system.