MRC DIVERSITY FOR BINARY SIGNALS IN CORRELATED NAKAGAMI FADING

The performance of maximal ratio combiner (MRC) diversity reception wi th L correlated branches in Nakagami fading is presented. Bit error ra te (BER) is evaluated for binary signals starting from the L-variate m oment-generating function (MGF) of the random input power vector. In t he case of Nakagami fading the L-variate statistics are not uniquely d etermined by marginal distributions and covariance matrix; in particul ar, two different joint MGFs are presented for the L-variate Nakagami vector, which give the same marginal density functions and covariance matrix and are easily generated. The two MGFs yield two different clos ed form expressions for the BER of the MRC diversity with generic bran ch correlation. The sensible difference in performances suggests that marginal probability density functions (pdfs) and power covariance mat rix are not sufficient to completely characterize correlated Nakagami fading. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.