Diversity evaluation based on correlation properties of Rician/Rayleigh fading signals subject to additive Gaussian noise

When measuring antenna diversity branch envelope signals, uncorrelated noise-like signals are corrupting the desired signals (described by Rician/Rayleigh fading processes). This causes a higher degree of envelope decorrelation between the total antenna branch signals. This has high importance in system design when estimating the diversity gain and the resulting link quality and cell layout. An analysis is presented, showing the total power cross-correlation being a 2nd order function of signal-to-noise (SNR) and Rician K-factor. For the Rayleigh fading case the total auto-correlation function is presented, which is useful in estimating necessary spacings in a space diversity system.