Mobile radio multi-link analysis

The error rates of MDPSK, coherent MPSK and noncoherent MFSK over slow flat, Rician fading channels are derived when linear diversity combining is applied to combat degradation due to fading. These closed-form solutions are sufficiently simple so that no approximations are needed for the numerical computations and general enough to include several cases of non-diversity, AWGN (the non-fading mode), Rayleigh fading, mixtures of Rayleigh and Rician fading (the mixed mode), and Rician fading. Error probabilities are graphically displayed for these different modulation schemes. The dependence of the power efficiency on the order of the diversity is plotted and examined for various values of M and a range of values of the Rician parameter K, the channel specular-to-scatter ratio for the measured statistics of mobile wireless channels. The analytical results presented are expected to provide much needed information for radio systems design and the evaluation of performance over fading channels when diversity reception is applied.