Performance metrics for diversity-combining techniques over Nakagami-m fading

In wireless communication systems, antenna diversity is an important technique to tackle deep fading. Diversity techniques mitigate the effects of fading by generating several copies of the signal transferred over M different theoretically independent channels. In this paper we review the most significant metrics used in the performance analysis of diversity combining techniques over Nakagami-m fading channels. These well-known metrics are Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), Outage Probability (OP), Bit Error Rate (BER), Level Crossing Rate (LRC) and Average Fade Duration (AFD). In addition, we summarize how they are obtained from the first and second-order statistics of the resulting combined signal. The goal of this paper is to provide an straightforward guide on these metrics to ease the comparison studies among wireless communication systems. Moreover, we provide handy hints and references of the situation of this research area.