Performance of maximal-ratio diversity systems in a correlated Nakagami-fading environment

The bit error rate (BER) performance of an M branch maximal-ratio combiner (MRC) for the detection of signals in a correlated Nakagami-fading channel is analyzed. Coherent and incoherent detection of frequency shift-keying (FSK) and phase-shift keying (PSK) signals are considered. It is assumed that the fading parameters in each diversity branch are identical. The effect of correlation is studied by assuming two types of correlation among the quadrature components of the signals in each diversity branch. Outage probabilities are also calculated for the digital radio communication systems via the correlated fading channel.