On Joint Order Statistics in Correlated Nakagami Fading Channels

In this paper, an expression for the joint probability density function (pdf) of the order statistics for a set of arbitrarily correlated Nakagami-m fading channels is derived. This result is useful in analyzing the performance of a variety of diversity schemes which involve branch selections. The derivation also yields a computationally efficient method for obtaining the marginal pdf of the p-th order statistic for a set of arbitrarily correlated Nakagami-m random variables. As an illustration, the derived result is applied to the performance analysis of the generalized selection combining (GSC) scheme with arbitrarily correlated branches.