Bit error outage for diversity reception in shadowing environment

This letter addresses the problem of evaluating the bit error outage (BEO), i.e., the outage probability defined in terms of bit error probability, in a Rayleigh fading and shadowing environment. We consider coherent detection of binary phase-shift keying with maximal ratio combining (MRC). As an example application, the BEO in a log-normal shadowing environment is analyzed and the improvement in terms of BEO due to MRC is quantified in different shadowing environments.