Performance of maximum ratio combining of fluctuating two‐ray (FTR) mmWave channels for 5G and beyond communications

Abstract

AbstractRecently, a millimeter‐wave band channel model for fifth generation and beyond communications, called fluctuating two‐ray (FTR) model, has been introduced, which accurately tracks the behavior of wireless communication links in that band. In this paper, the performance of maximum ratio combining (MRC) of signals received through independent FTR channels is evaluated. Closed‐form expressions for the probability distribution of the signal‐to‐noise ratio at the output of the MRC combiner, outage probability of the system, and a tight upper bound for average bit error probability are derived. From the results obtained, it is shown that MRC for FTR channels achieves the same diversity order as MRC for Rayleigh fading, and equal to the number of diversity branches. Additionally, the effects of the FTR fading model parameters on the system performance have been investigated via numerical results obtained from analytical derivations. Comparison between analytical and simulation results show that they are in excellent agreement. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to analyze the performance of MRC for FTR channels.