Effects of hands on the 4-branch MRC diversity gain for terrestrial digital broadcasting portable TV

This paper studies on effects of hands on the diversity gain for a 4-branch MRC array implemented in a terrestrial digital broadcasting TV set. In the first step, using a four-element dipole array antenna, the relationship between decrease in the diversity gain and reduction of the receive power, and decrease in the diversity gain and the number of branches to be reduced received power, was investigated by means of a Monte Carlo simulation. Then using the simulated results, a simple method of predicting the diversity gain under the power imbalance condition is given. The goal is to know the criterion with respect to the gain reduction for achieving a required system performance. Finally, the proposed method is confirmed by the analysis using a model of a typical portable digital broadcasting TV set held with both hands simulating the power imbalance condition.