Letter Communication Theory Average output SNR of equal-gain diversity receivers over correlative Weibull fading channels

In this letter, capitalising on a recently presented expression for the joint probability density function of the Weibull fading statistical model, a novel closed-form expression is derived for the average output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of an L-branch receiver employing equal-gain combining (EGC). The obtained expression includes the case of correlative fading with arbitrary correlation among the input branches, as well as non-identical fading statistics. Numerical results depict the effects of the fading severity, the fading correlation and the number of diversity branches, on EGC performance. An interesting outcome is that the average output SNR is not a clear and meaningful measure for the EGC receivers performance, when these operate in correlative fading channels. Copyright # 2005 AEIT. 1