The effect of branch correlation in dual MRC, SC and SWC diversity systems for noncoherent MFSK over Nakagami-m fading channels

Abstract

This paper presents closed form expressions far the average symbol error rate (SER) of noncoherent M-ary frequency shift keying (MFSK) with dual brmtck maximal ratio- combining (MMCl selection combining (SC) and switched combining (SWC) space diversity receptions over correlated Nakagami'm fading channels. Numerical results demonstrate the error performmicg degradation due to ike effects of correlated bmmches in the three diversity combining systems. They also show that there is similar performance degradation in different diversity combining systems when correlation coefficient p is increased from 0 to CkS, Furthermore, the error performance of employing MRC and SC diversity receptions are very close to each other when both the branch correlation and channel fading are severe.