Performance of Non Co-phase EGC Diversity Technique with Multiple Antennas on Limited Space

Abstract

The Equal Gain Combining (EGC) diversity technique is generally known to have a performance close to an optimal Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC) technique while being less complex for realization. Hence, the implementation of EGC in practice is of interest; however the implementation of EGC diversity is cumbersome due to additional circuitry required for making a co-phase signal in each branch. As a result, it is interesting to investigate whether non co-phase EGC diversity is able to provide an acceptable performance while keeping much greatersimplicity with only marginally inferior as compared to co-phase method. This paper studies performance of non co-phase EGC diversity through the problem of limited space on WLAN terminal. This is because the diversity technique in real application cannot determine antenna spacing as large as required in theory. Therefore, it is impossible to avoid the effect of antenna correlation due to limited space. Also in this paper, the measurements of WLAN signals are undertaken in order to justify the use of proposed system. The results reveal that non co-phase EGC diversity provides a benefit on enhancing signal strengths where its performance depends on number of antennas and type of fading channels.