Performance Analysis of Composite Fading Channel Based on Point Estimate Method

A simple procedure is outlined to provide a point estimate mixture gamma distribution (PEMG) which closely approximates intractable distribution characterizing composite fading channel. The efficacy of the proposed PEMG to match target channel model in relation to other available approximate distributions is demonstrated using Kullback–Leibler measure of divergence. The simplicity and accuracy of the PEMG facilitates the computation of analytical expressions for some of the widely used performance measures viz., average symbol error rate and channel capacity under different adaptive transmission schemes. Numerical computations in relation to exact results are carried out to validate the accuracy of the derived expressions over the realistic range of parameters for the channel model.