A unified approach for calculating error rates of linearly modulated signals over generalized fading channels

We present a unified analytical framework to determine the exact average symbol-error-rate (SER) of linearly modulated signals over generalized fading channels. The results are applicable to systems employing coherent demodulation with maximal-ratio combining multichannel reception. The analyses assume independent fading paths which are not necessarily identically distributed. In all cases the proposed approach leads to an expression of the average SER involving a single finite-range integral which can be easily computed numerically. In addition, as special cases, SER expressions for single channel reception are obtained. These expressions reduce to well-known solutions, give alternate (often simpler) expressions for previous results, or provide new formulas which are either closed-form expressions or simple to compute numerically.