Analysis of transmit antenna selection/ maximal-ratio combining in Rayleigh fading channels

In this paper, we investigate a scheme for combining transmit-antenna selection (TAS) and maximal-ratio combining (MRC) (TAS/MRC). In this scheme a single antenna is chosen for transmission among all available transmit antennas and MRC is performed at the receiver side. The bit error rate (BER) of the TAS/MRC scheme is derived for binary phase-shift-keying (BPSK) in flat Rayleigh fading channels. The analysis shows that the TAS/MRC scheme can achieve the full diversity as if all the transmit antennas were used. The simulation shows that this scheme significantly outperforms the space-time block codes (STBCs) of the same diversity order with the same spectral efficiency.