TY - JOUR TI - On the Effective Capacity of Amplify-and-Forward Multihop Transmission over Arbitrary and Correlated Fading Channels AU - Peppas, K.P. AU - Mathiopoulos, P.T. AU - Yang, J. JO - IEEE Wireless Communications Letters PY - 2016 VL - 5 TODO - 3 SP - 248-251 PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE) SN - 2162-2337, 2162-2345 TODO - 10.1109/LWC.2016.2530787 TODO - Channel state information; Fading channels; Intelligent systems, Amplify and forward; Amplify-and-forward relay systems; Correlated fading channels; Delay constraints; Effective capacity; Moment generating function; Multihop; Numerical integration techniques, Monte Carlo methods TODO - This letter presents a novel approach for analyzing, in a unified way, the effective capacity performance of multihop transmission with channel state information assisted amplify-and-forward relay systems over arbitrary and correlated fading channels under a maximum delay constraint. Using a moment generating function based approach, an exact single integral expression for the effective capacity is deduced. This expression can be easily evaluated by means of standard numerical integration techniques for a great deal of fading distributions, such as the Nakagami-m, Generalized-K, and Generealized Gamma. Several case studies, including uncorrelated and correlated fading environments, are employed to demonstrate the versatility of the proposed analytical approach. Extensive numerically evaluated results accompanied with complimentary Monte-Carlo simulations are used to substantiate the analytical derivations. © 2016 IEEE. ER -