Performance analysis of maximum ratio transmission with imperfect channel estimation

Maximal ratio transmission (MRT) is designed assuming the availability of perfect channel state information (CSI) at both the transmitter and the receiver. However, perfect CSI is not available in practice. This paper investigates the impact of Gaussian estimation errors on the MRT performance in independently and identically distributed (i.i.d.) Rayleigh fading channels. We derive the cumulative distribution function (cdf), the probability density function (pdf) and the moment generating function (mgf) of the MRT output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with imperfect CSI, enabling the evaluation of some useful performance metrics such as the average error rate and the outage performance. Numerical and simulation results are provided to show the impact of imperfect CSI on the MRT performance.