Abstract
In this paper, we investigate the average symbol error probability (SEP) of fixed decode-and-forward relay networks over independent but not identically distributed Nakagami-m fading channels. We have derived closed form expression of SEP for general rectangular quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) under relay selection scheme where only the best relay forwards message from the source to the destination. The expressions are in terms of hypergeometric series which can be efficiently numerically evaluated. The numerical results are validated with Monte-Carlo simulations.