Exact evaluation of maximal-ratio and equal-gain diversity receivers for M-ary QAM on Nakagami fading channels

Exact integral expressions are derived for calculating the symbol-error rate (SER) of multilevel quadrature amplitude modulation (MQAM) in conjunction with L-fold antenna diversity on arbitrary Nakagami fading channel. Both maximal-ratio combining (MRC) (in independent and correlated fading) and equal-gain combining (EGC) predetection (in independent fading) diversity techniques have been considered. Exact closed-form SER expressions for two restricted Nakagami fading cases (MRC reception) are also derived. An exact analysis of EGC for MQAM has not been reported previously, despite its practical interest. Remarkably, the exact SER integrals can also be replaced by a finite-series approximation formula. A useful procedure for computing the confluent hypergeometric series is also presented.