Average error probability of optimum combining with a co-channel interferer in Nakagami fading

The average bit error rate (BER) performance of an adaptive antenna array system with the optimum combining scheme that maximizes the output signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) is analyzed. BER expressions that are easy to evaluate numerically are derived for a generalized fading environment with a co-channel interference and Gaussian noise. Specifically, we assume that the fading environment is such that the channel may be characterized by a spherically invariant random process (SIRP), with the received signal envelope following the Nakagami-m (1960) distribution. This channel model is sufficiently general to characterize different degrees of fading severity for the desired and interfering signals