Performance analysis of 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation with diversity reception for land mobile satellite channel

An analytical technique is developed to evaluate the error rate performance of 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (16^ary AM) in a land mobile satellite communication channel (LMSC) with diversity reception. Closed form expressions are found for L-branch diversity using two types of diversity combining techniques, namely, selection diversity combining (SDC) and maximal ratio combining (MRC). The channel exhibits fading and shadowing as well as additive white Gaussian noise. Fading and shadowing cause both envelope and phase variations of the received signal. It is assumed that the channel consists of Nakagami distributed shadowed line-of-sight signal plus Rayleigh distributed multipath signals. Numerical results are provided illustrating the achievable performance of 16^aryQAM with diversity reception. Using measured channel parameters, the performance in various mobile environments is evaluated for light, average and heavy shadowing and fading. The derived expressions are useful for the design of land mobile satellite data communication systems.