Channel Estimation for Amplify-and-Forward Relaying: Cascaded Against Disintegrated Estimators

The authors investigate the performance of amplify-and-forward relaying with two different pilot-symbol-assisted channel estimation methods. In the first estimation method, the cascaded channel consisting of source-to-relay and relay-to-destination links is estimated at the destination terminal. No channel estimator is required at the relay terminal. In the second estimation method, the estimation of cascaded channel is disintegrated into separate estimations of source-to-relay and relay-to-destination links which are carried out at the relay and the destination terminals, respectively.