Noise correlation in compact diversity receivers

The impact of antenna mutual coupling on signal correlation in multi-antenna receivers has been studied in great detail. By contrast, there has been little work on how mutual coupling affects noise. In this paper we present a noise model for a diversity receiver that includes noise generated by the antennas, front-end amplifiers, and other receiver components. This model shows that noise in a compact diversity receiver may be spatially correlated. Expressions relating noise correlation to properties of the antennas and amplifiers are derived and its impact on the outage probability of an optimal diversity combiner is studied. Examples illustrating the relationship between mutual coupling and noise correlation demonstrate how different noise sources may impact performance in profoundly different ways.