Outage Probability of MRC Diversity over Correlated Shadowed Fading Channels

In this letter, the outage probability of an L-branch Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC) diversity system is evaluated under non-identical correlated lognormal shadowed Rayleigh fading channels by extending the Moment Generation Function (MGF) method to approximate the output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by a new lognormal random variable, whose cumulative distribution function (cdf) is obtained by numerically solving for its mean and standard deviation. This cdf is then utilized to obtain the outage probability at a specific threshold. Extensive Monte Carlo simulations verify that the proposed approach is an accurate and efficient method to evaluate the desired outage probability, which would greatly facilitate the design and analysis of such systems.