Second-order statistics for equal gain combining with arbitrary channels

This paper presents two general unified approaches for calculating the level crossing rate and the average fade duration of equal gain combining systems with a generic number of independent fading channels, having unequal mean signal powers and arbitrary fading conditions. Accordingly, exact PDF-based and Fourier-based expressions are obtained for both performance criteria. As for the fading condition, channels may differ in degree and model, including Nakagami-m and Rice distributions. Numerical examples reveal that power unbalance strongly deteriorates the combiner's performance, and may render the system performing worse than a non-diversity scheme. Effects of fading conditions are shown to be less influential in the performance, mainly at high signal levels.