Exact outage probability for equal gain combining with cochannel interference in Rayleigh fading

Equal gain combining (EGC) diversity has performance close to that of maximal ratio combining but at lower implementation complexity. We present a new outage performance analysis for EGC in mobile cellular radio systems that are limited by cochannel interference and undergo Rayleigh fading. We utilize a new model where interfering signals add in amplitude and phase across antenna array elements. In addition, the interfering signals may each have a different power. In comparing our analysis to an existing method, we find that: 1) as much as 1.5 dB difference in signal-to-interference ratio may exist at the same probability of outage; 2) the existing method can lead to overly optimistic outage performance prediction in certain situations.