Switching rate and receiver performance of binary modulations with the selection‐and‐stay combining over independent and correlated Nakagami‐m fading channels

The dual‐branch selection‐and‐stay combining (SSTC) is analyzed for diversity reception on independent and correlated Nakagami‐m fading channels, where the conventional selection combining (SC) is employed only at the switching instance, and the receiver uses the selected branch till its signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) estimation is lower than a preset threshold. In this combining scheme, the receiver only needs to continuously estimate the SNR of the single selected branch. For the performance analysis of SSTC, the switching rate and the average bit error rates (BERs) of different binary coherent and non‐coherent modulations are evaluated. Numerical results based on the analysis and simulations are illustrated. According to the analysis and numerical results, the SSTC outperforms the existing switch‐and‐stay combining in the senses of the average BER and switching rate. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.