  This paper extends some approximation methods that are used to identify
closed form Bit Error Rate (BER) expressions which are frequently utilized in
investigation and comparison of performance for wireless communication systems
in the literature. By using this group of approximation methods, some
expectation integrals, which are complicated to analyze and have high
computational complexity to evaluate through Monte Carlo simulations, are
computed. For these integrals, by using the sampling property of the integrand
functions of one or more arguments, reliable BER expressions revealing the
diversity and coding gains are derived. Although the methods we present are
valid for a larger class of integration problems, in this work we show the step
by step derivation of the BER expressions for a canonical cooperative
communication scenario in addition to a network coded system starting from
basic building blocks. The derived expressions agree with the simulation
results for a very wide range of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values.
