Improving the Processing Power Efficiency of Minimum Selection GSC with Adaptive Modulation and Post-Combining Power Control

Many joint adaptive modulation and diversity combining (JAMDC) schemes have been recently proposed to improve the performance and efficiency of wireless communication systems. Considering the problem of finding low-complexity, bandwidth-efficient, and processing-power efficient transmission schemes for a downlink scenario and capitalizing on one of these recently proposed JAMDC schemes, we propose and analyze in this paper a JAMDC scheme using post combining power control and finger deactivation. More specifically, the modulation constellation size and the number of combined diversity paths are jointly determined to achieve the highest spectral efficiency with the lowest possible combining complexity, given the fading channel conditions and the required error rate performance. Selected numerical examples show that the newly proposed scheme considerably reduces the processing power consumption with a slight increase in the radiated power while maintaining high average spectral efficiency and compliance with bit error rate constraints.