Analysis on SC-2 Diversity Systems for the Reception of M-ary Signals over Rayleigh Fading Channels

When the M-ary signal experiences the Rayleigh fading, the diversity schemes can reduce the effects of fading since the probability that all the signals components will fade simultaneously are reduced considerably. The symbol error probabilities for various M-ary signals, such as MDPSK, MPSK and MQAM, are mathematically derived for the SC-2(Selection Combining 2) demodulation system, whereby the two signals with the two largest amplitudes are coherently combined among the L branches. On the other hand, maximum ratio combining(MRC) requires the individual signals from each path to be time-aligned, cophased, optimally weighted by their own fading amplitude, and then summed. The propagation model used in this paper is the frequency-nonselective slow Rayleigh fading channel corrupted by the Additive White Gaussian Noise(AWGN). The numerical results presented in this paper are expected to provide information for the design of radio system using M-ary modulation method for above mentioned channel environment.