Analytical Envelope Correlation and Outage Probability of Maximal-Ratio Combined Rician Fading Channels

Abstract

In this paper, with minor approximation, we provide analytical expressions in a close form for the envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) and outage probability of the maximal ratio combining (MRC) output in correlated Rayleigh and Rician fading environments. Moreover, we find a simple relationship between ECC and the outage probability, which indicates that ECC can be used to predict system performance such as outage probability quantitatively. Besides, it has been demonstrated by Monte Carlo simulation that our analysis are matched with the numerical results excellently.