Performance of MQAM with MRC diversity reception over Rician fading environment

This paper presents very accurate and computationally efficient average bit error rate of Wary quadrature amplitude modulation (MQAM), when maximum ratio combining (MRC) diversity is applied. The fading channels are modeled as frequency non-selective slow Rician fading channels corrupted by additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). The solutions are sufficiently simple so that no approximation is needed for numerical computation and general enough to include cases of non-diversity, Rayleigh fading, and Rician fading. Error probabilities are graphically shown for the case of 16QAM in order to examine the effects of fading severity, for various values of Rician parameter, K. The dependence of error rates on order of diversity is also plotted. The analytical results presented in this paper are expected to provide a convenient tool for design and analysis of a radio system in fading environment under diversity reception.