Transmit Antenna Selection Systems: A Performance Comparison of Different Types of Receiver Schemes

In this survey article, we compare the performance of single transmit antenna selection (TAS) systems with different kinds of receiver schemes. These systems include the TAS/switch-and-examine combining (TAS/SEC), TAS/SEC with postselection (TAS/SECPS), TAS/generalized selection combining (TAS/GSC), and TAS/output-threshold generalized selection combining (TAS/OT-GSC) systems. The performance comparisons are made in terms of the average output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), symbol-error rate (SER), the number of channel estimates Ne, and the number of branches required for processing Np . It is shown that the TAS/SECPS and TAS/OT-GSC systems can achieve similar performance compared with the TAS/selection combining (SC) and TAS/GSC systems, respectively, with a reduced number of both channel estimates and branches required for processing when the predetermined SNR threshold is optimized.