Coherent detection in a receive diversity PLC system under Nakagami-m noise environment

This paper proposes to use N-branch diversity reception for a power line communication (PLC) system with binary phase-shift keying to improve the reliability of data transmission. The PLC channel is subject to Rayleigh fading and additive Nakagami-m background noise with m <; 1, which is caused by multiple noise sources. The optimal detector for this system is derived by approximating the noise distribution by Hoyt distribution. A closed form expression and a series expression for the symbol error probability for even and odd N, respectively, are obtained. The advantage of using multiple receive branches in terms of achieving better error performance and its power efficiency are shown through numerical results. The effect of the shape parameter m of the background noise on the performance of the optimal receiver is also demonstrated.