Equal gain combiner performance in equally-correlated Rayleigh fading channels

This paper develops a novel approach for performance analysis of multi-branch pre-detection equal gain combining (EGC) in equally-correlated Rayleigh fading channels. We convert a set of equally-correlated channel gains to a set of conditionally independent channel gains. The cumulative distribution function (cdf) of EGC output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is therefore derived. The symbol error rate (SER) of different modulation schemes with pre-detection EGC in equally-correlated Rayleigh fading channels is also evaluated. Numerical results that illustrate the effects of equally-correlated fading on the SER performance of EGC are also provided.