Asymptotic performance of transmit antenna selection with maximal-ratio combining for generalized selection criterion

In this letter, we investigate the asymptotic error performance of an uncoded multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) scheme combining transmit antenna selection and receiver maximal-ratio combining (MRC) with a generalized selection criterion. A single transmit antenna corresponding to a fixed ordinal number of order statistic is selected for uncoded transmission. The order statistics consist of instantaneous channel power gain between each transmit and all the receive antennas. A general asymptotic bit error rate (BER) expression is derived for all values of ordinal number. An interesting conclusion is reached that the system diversity order is proportional to the ordinal number of the selected antenna.