Dual diversity over correlated Ricean fading channels

The performance of dual diversity receivers operating over correlated Ricean fading channels is analyzed. Using a previously derived rapidly converging infinite series representation for the bivariate Ricean probability density function, analytical expressions for the statistics of dual-branch selection combining, maximal-ratio combining, and equal-gain combining output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) are derived. These expressions are employed to obtain novel analytical formulae for the average output SNR, amount of fading, average bit error probability, and outage probability. The proposed mathematical analysis is used to study various novel performance evaluation results with parameters of interest the fading severity, average input SNRs, and the correlation coefficient. The series convergence rate is also examined verifying the fast convergence of the analytical expressions. The accuracy of most of the theoretical performance evaluation results are validated by means of computer simulations.