Performance analysis of SIR-based dual selection diversity over correlated Nakagami-m fading channels

Signal-to-interference-ratio (SIR)-based selection diversity is an efficient technique to mitigate fading and cochannel interference in wireless communications systems. An approach to the performance analysis of dual SIR-based selection diversity over correlated Nakagami-m fading channels with arbitrary parameters is presented. Useful formulae for the outage probability, the average output SIR, and the average error probability for coherent, noncoherent, and multilevel modulation schemes are derived. The main contribution of the paper is that, for the first time, the proposed analysis is carried out assuming correlated Nakagami-m fading with arbitrary parameters for both the desired signals and the cochannel interferers, which is the real scenario in practical dual selection diversity systems with insufficient antenna spacing. It is shown that the presented general results reduce to the specific ones for the independent fading case, previously published. Numerical and simulation results are also presented to show the effects of various parameters, such as the fading severity, input SIR unbalance, and level of correlation, to the system's performance.