Spectral efficiency of dual diversity selection combining schemes under correlated Nakagami-0.5 fading with unequal average received SNR

Abstract

The spectral efficiency results for different adaptive transmission schemes over correlated diversity branches with unequal average signal to noise ratio (SNR) obtained so far in literature are not applicable for Nakagami-0.5 fading channels. In this paper, we investigate the effect of fade correlation and level of imbalance in the branch average received SNR on the spectral efficiency of Nakagami-0.5 fading channels in conjunction with dual-branch selection combining (SC). This paper derived the expressions for the spectral efficiency over correlated Nakagami-0.5 fading channels with unequal average received SNR. This spectral efficiency is evaluated under different adaptive transmission schemes using dual-branch SC diversity scheme. The corresponding expressions for Nakagami-0.5 fading are considered to be the expressions under worst fading conditions. Finally, numerical results are provided to illustrate the spectral efficiency degradation due to channel correlation and unequal average received SNR between the different combined branches under different adaptive transmission schemes. It has been observed that optimal simultaneous power and rate adaptation (OPRA) scheme provides improved spectral efficiency as compared to truncated channel inversion with fixed rate (TIFR) and optimal rate adaptation with constant transmit power (ORA) schemes under worst case fading scenario. It is very interesting to observe that TIFR scheme is always a better choice over ORA scheme under correlated Nakagami-0.5 fading channels with unequal average received SNR.