Selection Combining Site Diversity Performance in High Altitude Platform Networks

High altitude platform networks operating in Ka-bands and V-bands exhibit severe degradation due to multiple atmospheric phenomena. In such frequencies, site diversity is a very efficient fade mitigation technique. This letter introduces a novel physical analytical model for the evaluation of selection combining site diversity error performance, taking into account the spatial correlation of rain attenuation and the total attenuation statistics. The outage performance of selection combining reception is being calculated through exact close-form formulas. Numerical results highlight the significant improvement against single site reception and determine the optimum relative positioning of main and diverse sites.