On the Error Analysis of Two-Way Relaying in mmWave-Based Aerial Links

Exploiting the high-frequency bands, such as millimeter wave band (mmWave), has become a pressing need due to the increasing demand on the high data rates. However, two main challenges are still hindering the usage of mmWave band, which are represented by the short transmission distance and strict Line-of-Sight (LoS) requirements. To this end, relaying schemes have been widely nominated to address these two challenges, where the transmission distance can be extended and the LoS can be attained by the aid of a well-positioned relay. One of the promising spectral-efficient relaying schemes is the well known Two-Way Relaying (TWR). In this paper, the performance of the TWR scheme is investigated for aerial links operating over the mmWave band. Specifically, the bit error rate (BER) is analyzed for a dual-hop system in which source, relay and destination are represented by hovering unmanned aerial vehicles. A closed form expression of the average BER is derived considering the impact of the antennas' fluctuations, modulation order, transmission distance, beamwidth, path loss and channel fading. Simulation results are explored to investigate the impact of all operational parameters.