Abstract: Cooperative relay networks can achieve spatial diversity, but their system performances heavily depends on relay selection schemes. To solve this problem, a hybrid satellite-terrestrial cooperative network relay selection strategy based on Q-learning is proposed. First, under the consideration that all the relay nodes employ amplify-and-forward protocol, the end-to-end output signal-to-noise ratio after combining the maximal ratio is derived. Next, the state, action and reward function of Q-learning are set to select the relay node with the greatest cumulative return. Then, in order to traverse all states, Boltzmann selection policy is induced to select action by probability approach, so that the source node can explore all states and find the optimal one. Finally, the optimal transmission power is obtained by using power allocation scheme between the selected relay node and the source node. Simulation results show that, compared with the random relay selection algorithm, the proposed strategy greatly improves the system performance.

Key words: hybrid satellite-terrestrial cooperative network, relay selection, Q-learning, Boltzmann selection policy, power allocation