Comparison of AF and DF under Cooperative Diversity

Cooperative diversity is a new space diversity technology under the slow fading channel. There are two cooperative models, Amplify and Forward (AF) model and Decode and Forward (DF) model (Coded Cooperation (CC) is a special case of DF). A detailed comparison of AF and DF models are given in this paper. The simulations under symmetrical channel and dissymmetrical channel are also given. The results given in this paper show that the AF model has more advantage than the DF model at the same condition from the theory analyses and the simulations. Although they have the same diversity gains, the AF model has bigger array gain than the DF model, Whereas the DF model has more agilities than the AF model.