Abstract
This paper presents a generalized approach to the performance analysis of relay-aided communication systems for 5G-and-beyond scenarios. A dual-hop decoding and forwarding scheme is considered in the analysis. The relationship between the outage performance and cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is exploited to derive a universal expression of the outage probability that is valid for all fading scenarios, irrespective of their nature or complexity. Furthermore, an effort is made to parameterize the channel PDF in such a manner that reflects a practical fading scenario that is commonly encountered in current and future wireless communication systems. The analytical results obtained for various cases are validated through Monte-Carlo simulations.