Analysis of minimum selection H-S/MRC in Rayleigh fading

We analyze the error performance of an improved hybrid selection/maximal-ratio combining (H-S/MRC) technique called minimum selection H-S/MRC in flat Rayleigh fading for coherent digital modulation schemes. Here the minimum number of diversity branches are selected such that their combined signal-to-noise ratio is above a given threshold. We derive a closed-form expression for the distribution of the number of selected branches. This distribution is used to obtain the symbol error probability.