Diversity Combining for Fast Frequency Hopping Multiple Access Systems Subjected to Nakagami-m Fading

The achievable performance of various diversity combining schemes used in fast frequency hopping (FFH) aided M-ary frequency shift keying (MFSK) systems operating in a multiple access scenario subjected to Nakagami-m fading is investigated. Specifically, linear, self-normalization, hard limiting majority vote, soft limiting, product combining and order statistics-normalized envelope detection based diversity combining schemes are considered. The comparison of various diversity combining schemes is based on the achievable bit error rate versus the number of simultaneous users supported. It is shown using simulation results that although some of the combining schemes considered result in an inferior performance compared to the optimum soft limiting combiner, they offer the advantage of achieving an acceptable interference suppression performance without requiring side information.