Asymptotic Analysis of Amplify and Forward Relaying in a Parallel MIMO Relay Network

Abstract: This paper considers the setup of a parallel MIMO relay network in which $K$ relays, each equipped with $N$ antennas, assist the transmitter and the receiver, each equipped with $M$ antennas, in the half-duplex mode, under the assumption that $N\geq{M}$. This setup has been studied in the literature like in \cite{nabar}, \cite{nabar2}, and \cite{qr}. In this paper, a simple scheme, the so-called Incremental Cooperative Beamforming, is introduced and shown to achieve the capacity of the network in the asymptotic case of $K\to{\infty}$ with a gap no more than $O(\frac{1}{\log(K)})$. This result is shown to hold, as long as the power of the relays scales as $\omega(\frac{\log^9(K)}{K})$. Finally, the asymptotic SNR behavior is studied and it is proved that the proposed scheme achieves the full multiplexing gain, regardless of the number of relays.