Bit-error rate performance study of receive diversity for wireless communication system

In real-life applications, antenna diversity is a very common diversity technique that improves the quality and reliability of a wireless network by utilizing two or more antennas. The primary purpose of this report is to study the effect of receiver diversity in a digital communication system by simulating BER performance in MATLAB. The effect of receiver diversity will be investigated in accordance with different channel environments, modulation schemes, and MIMO systems. At the receiver side, three of the combining methods, namely Maximal-Ratio Combining (MRC), Selection Combining (SC), and Equal Gain Combining (EGC), are examined and compared. A few new combining methods will be proposed and compared with existing ones. In general, higher Diversity level L will lead to improved BER performance as the probability of correct detection is increased. However, as the diversity level increases, the BER performance improvement may not last forever. Other related factors such as channel conditions, modulation methods, MIMO, and MIMO-OFDM are included for an enriched comparison. To elaborate, simulations of flat fading channels such as AWGN, Rayleigh, and Rician are performed to compare with frequency-selective channels. The difference between SISO, SIMO, and MIMO systems and the various common modulation techniques will be discussed in this report. Moreover, the advantages of OFDM in combatting multipath fading are also demonstrated.Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical and Electronic Engineering