Second-Order Statistics of η-μ Fading Channels: Theory and Applications

In this work, a number of new closed-form expressions for the eta-mu fading channels involving the joint statistics of the envelope, phase, and their time derivatives are obtained. Level crossing rate (LCR), average fade duration (AFD), and phase crossing rate (PCR) are also derived. The expressions are thoroughly validated by reducing them to some particular known cases and, more generally, by means of Monte Carlo simulation. We then provide alternative (i) singlefold integral exact formulations and (ii) highly-accurate approximations to the level-crossing statistics of multibranch maximal-ratio combining (MRC) and equal-gain combining (EGC) systems, respectively, operating over independent Hoyt fading channels, for which the exact solutions appear in the literature in multifold integral forms.