Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) will play a fundamental role in the realization of Internet of Things and Industry 4.0. Arising from the presence of spatially distributed sensor nodes in a sensor network, cooperative diversity can be achieved by using the sensor nodes between a given source-destination pair as intermediate relay stations. In this paper, we investigate the end-to-end average bit error rate (BER) and the channel capacity of a multi-hop relay network in the presence of impulsive noise modeled by the well-known Middleton's class-A model. Specifically, we consider a multi-hop decode-and-forward (DF) relay network over Nakagami-m fading channel due to its generality, but also due to the absence of reported works in this area. Closed-form analytical expressions for the end-to-end average BER and the statistical properties of the end-to-end channel capacity are obtained. The impacts of the channel parameters on these performance quantities are evaluated and discussed.
Keywords: bit error rate; channel capacity; cooperative relay; decode-and-forward; fading channel; harsh environment; impulsive noise; system performance; wireless sensor network.