Performance of MRC Diversity Receivers over Correlated Nakagami-m Fading Channels

Abstract — We present exact closed-form expressions for the statistics of the sum of non-identical squared Nakagami-m random variables and it is shown that it can be written as a weighted sum of Erlang distributions. The analysis includes both independent and correlated cases with distinct average powers and integer-order fading parameters. The proposed formulation significantly improves previously published re-sults which are in the form of infinite sums or higher order derivatives. The obtained formulae can be applied on the performance analysis of maximal-ratio combining diversity receivers operating over Nakagami-m fading channels. I