Simple Average BER Formulas for M-ary Orthogonal Signals with Noncoherent Diversity Combining in Nakagami-m Fading Channels

This paper presents simple and exact expressions for the average bit error rate (BER) of M-ary orthogonal signals with noncoherent diversity combining in independent as well as arbitrarily correlated nonidentically distributed Nakagami-m fading channels. The expressions are given in terms of elementary functions, and they do not involve numerical integrals or complicated functional operations. In addition, they are valid for the generalized case when the channels have arbitrary average signal- to-noise ratios (SNRs) as well as nonidentical fading parameters. Simulation results are provided to validate the analytical results.