Performance study of some diversity schemes in a Nakagami fading channel

Closed form results for the symbol error probabilities are derived for M-ary, L branch Selection diversity schemes and Partial Decision combining schemes in a Nakagami fading environment using noncoherent frequency-shift keying modulation. The Maximum SNR selection, the Maximum output selection, the Optimal partial decision, and the Majority voting schemes are considered in this analysis. The analysis is not limited to integer values of the Nakagami fading parameter m. Results for the Rayleigh fading channel are obtained and presented as special cases of those of the Nakagami fading model. The symbol error probability when the diversity branches undergo different fading statistics with unequal mean SNR are considered for the Maximum SNR selection scheme. Outage probabilities are also calculated for some of the diversity combining schemes. A comparison of all the four schemes are discussed using the performance curves.