The Effect of Imperfect Channel Estimation on the Performance of Maximum Ratio Combining in the Presence of Cochannel Interference

In this paper, the effects of imperfect channel estimation on maximum ratio combining performance in receive antenna diversity systems with multiple cochannel interferers are examined. The channel considered is a slowly varying flat Rayleigh fading channel that is also spatially independent. The combiner weights are the imperfect estimates of the desired user´s fading coefficients and are assumed to be complex Gaussian distributed. Closed-form expressions for signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio distribution and outage probability are obtained for both equal-power and unequal-power interferer scenarios. Using these expressions, the effect of channel estimation quality on system performance is investigated