A periodic switching diversity technique for a digital FM land mobile radio

A simple and efficient diversity technique is proposed for use in a digital FM land mobile radio communication system. This technique receives two RF signals periodically by switching two antenna branches at a rate moderately higher than the bit rate. The improved bit error rate (BER) performance resulting from the use of diversity is shown to be the effect of transforming the probability density function of the signal energy per bit to noise power density ratio to a sharper distribution. Laboratory simulation test results show that in a Manchester-coded frequency-shift keying (FSK) system with a bit rate of 600 bit/s and a frequency deviation of ±5 kHz, the diversity gain at an average BER of 1 × 10^-3is about 10 dB for an optimum switching rate of about 2 kHz. This diversity improvement is also verified by the field test performed in a suburban area.