  This paper investigates the performance of optimal single stream beamforming
schemes in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) dual-hop amplify-and-forward
(AF) systems. Assuming channel state information is not available at the source
and relay, the optimal transmit and receive beamforming vectors are computed at
the destination, and the transmit beamforming vector is sent to the transmitter
via a dedicated feedback link. Then, a set of new closed-form expressions for
the statistical properties of the maximum eigenvalue of the resultant channel
is derived, i.e., the cumulative density function (cdf), probability density
function (pdf) and general moments, as well as the first order asymptotic
expansion and asymptotic large dimension approximations. These analytical
expressions are then applied to study three important performance metrics of
the system, i.e., outage probability, average symbol error rate and ergodic
capacity. In addition, more detailed treatments are provided for some important
special cases, e.g., when the number of antennas at one of the nodes is one or
large, simple and insightful expressions for the key parameters such as
diversity order and array gain of the system are derived. With the analytical
results, the joint impact of source, relay and destination antenna numbers on
the system performance is addressed, and the performance of optimal beamforming
schemes and orthogonal space-time block-coding (OSTBC) schemes are compared.
Results reveal that the number of antennas at the relay has a great impact on
how the numbers of antennas at the source and destination contribute to the
system performance, and optimal beamforming not only achieves the same maximum
diversity order as OSTBC, but also provides significant power gains over OSTBC.
