Optimized transmitter diversity systems in Rice fading channels

Transmitter diversity can achieve diversity gain at the receiver with performance equivalent to that of receiver diversity. Earlier works have studied optimizing (minimizing bit error probability) the performance of transmitter over diversity systems in Rayleigh and Nakagami-m fading channels. In this paper we optimize the performance of transmitter diversity systems in a Rician fading channel. The effect of imperfect fading parameter and channel gain estimation on the performance of such systems is also discussed. A simple closed form solution exists for the Nakagami-m case and we choose to approximate the Rice distribution with the Nakagami-m distribution and study its impact on the optimum power loading algorithm since numerical evaluation of the optimum power loading algorithm for Rice fading is slightly more cumbersome for "real-time" applications.