Closed-form analysis of multibranch switched diversity with noncoherent and differentially coherent detection

Exact closed-form analytical expressions are derived for the average bit error probability of multibranch switched diversity systems over independent and identically Nakagami-m distributed fading channels. Practical schemes that use noncoherent or differentially coherent symbol detection are considered. The general bit error probability expression derived in this paper includes as particular cases the following signaling formats: orthogonal binary signaling, correlated binary signaling, differential phase-shift keying, and differential quadrature phase-shift keying. Finally, we apply our analytical results to study the impact of the switching threshold selection on the system performance. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.