Terahertz Wireless Transmissions with Maximal Ratio Combining over Fluctuating Two-Ray Fading

Mitigating channel fading and transceiver impairments are desirable for high-speed terahertz (THz) wireless links. This paper analyzes the performance of a multi-antenna THz wireless system by considering the combined effect of pointing errors and fluctuating two-ray (FTR) fading model. We provide a statistical characterization of the maximal ratio combining (MRC) receiver over independent and nonidentical (i.ni.d.) channel conditions in terms of multi-variate Fox’s H by deriving density and distribution functions of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of a single-link THz link using incomplete Gamma function. We develop exact analytical expressions of outage probability, average bit-error-rate (BER), and ergodic capacity for both single-antenna and MRC receivers. We also present the diversity order of the system by deriving asymptotic expressions for outage probability and average BER at high SNR to obtain insights into the system performance. We validate our derived analytical expressions with Monte-Carlo simulations and demonstrate the effect of various system and channel parameters on the performance of single and multi-antenna THz wireless communications.