Error probability performance of L-branch diversity reception of MQAM in Rayleigh fading

Abstract

New exact expressions involving hypergeometric functions are derived for the symbol-error rate (SER) of M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (MQAM) for L branch diversity reception in Rayleigh fading and additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). The diversity combining techniques considered are maximum ratio combining (MRC) and selection combining (SC). MRC with identical channels and dissimilar channels are analyzed.