An Improved Threshold-Based Channel Selection Scheme for Wireless Communication Systems.

In several wireless communication systems, low complexity channel selection schemes are required, as power efficient mechanisms to improve performance. In this context, the best selection scheme, in terms of performance, comes at the cost of increased complexity, since it necessitates a continuous monitoring of all available channels. In this paper, a new threshold-based channel selection strategy is proposed, which decreases the system complexity, without considerably affecting the system performance. Assuming independent but nonidentically distributed channel conditions, a generic analytical framework is first presented, based on the Markov chain theory. Then, the proposed selection scheme is applied to three specific communication scenarios, namely multichannel reception, transmit antenna selection with diversity reception, and cooperative relay selection. In all three cases, closed-form results are obtained and used to analyze the performance of the systems under consideration. It is shown that based on the proposed scheme, computational complexity is reduced and thus important energy savings can be achieved, without a significant loss in performance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]