A multiple-antenna diversity scheme for reception of fading signals in noise

Multiple-antenna diversity systems employ several antennas and a digital central receiver using diversity combiner to mitigate the effects of multipath fading. The multiple-antenna observations are processed at individual receivers and sent to a central receiver. The central receiver combines all the individual receiver information to form global information on which symbol was transmitted. In this paper, a multiple-antenna diversity scheme for digital communication is proposed. Each antenna observation is represented by course resolution information rather than high-resolution information. The proposed scheme is described for the case of noncoherent frequency-shift keying in slow Rayleigh fading and additive Gaussian noise. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated and compared to that of the optimum low-resolution and high-resolution schemes. Results indicate that the proposed scheme is cost effective and efficient. Results also indicate that the proposed scheme can be used instead of high-resolution scheme without noticeable loss in performance which simplifies receiver design and construction.