Performance of Coded Systems with Generalized Selection Diversity in Nakagami Fading

We investigate the performance of coded diversity systems employing generalized selection combining (GSC) over Nakagami fading channels. In particular, we derive a numerical evaluation method for the cutoff rate of the GSC systems. In addition, we derive a new union bound on the bit-error probability based on the code’s transfer function. The proposed bound is general to any coding scheme with a known weight distribution such as convolutional and trellis codes. Results show that the new bound is tight to simulation results for wide ranges of diversity order, Nakagami fading parameter, and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).