BER analysis of optimum combining and maximal ratio combining with channel correlation for dual antenna systems

The BER expressions for optimum combining (OC) and maximal ratio combining (MRC) in the presence of one co-channel interferer are derived in this paper for a dual antenna TDMA communication system with correlated channel diversity. Numerical results demonstrate the impact of the different correlation coefficients in combating fading and reducing CCI. It is shown that the BERs of OC and MRC are insensitive to the channel correlation of the interfering signal. However, the BERs of OC and MRC are degraded significantly when the channel correlation of the desired signal approaches unit.