Novel diversity receivers in the presence of Gaussian channel estimation errors

Novel diversity receivers that operate in the presence of Gaussian channel estimation errors are proposed for L independent and identically distributed fading channels. Previous work concerned with channel estimation errors has mainly examined the performance of maximal ratio combining (MRC) with estimation errors. It is shown here that MRC is not optimal when estimation errors occur. Moreover, it is shown that better diversity receivers that operate in the presence of Gaussian channel estimation errors can be obtained by using knowledge of the channel estimate statistics. Numerical results show that the derived new diversity receivers can perform as much as 2.0 dB in signal-to-noise ratio better than the conventional MRC receiver in some cases.