Combined Space Diversity Reception and Trellis Coding for Rayleigh Fading Channels

Space diversity reception, in which several signals received at different antennas are combined, is a well known method that can be used to combat the effects of fading in wireless systems. Also, trellis coded modulation (TCM), when combined with interleaving of sufficient depth, is known to provide some form of time diversity that allows the achievement of good error performance in fading environments. In this paper we consider the analysis of the error performance of reference-based Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC) systems when used in conjunction with trellis-coded MPSK modulation techniques over a Rayleigh fading channel. We also consider the analysis of MRC trellis-coded MPSK systems with conventional differential detection. The results are obtained by using a combination of theoretical analysis and simulation. Exact and near-exact expressions for the pairwise error-event probability in Rayleigh fading are derived. Monte-Carlo simulation results, which are more indicative of the exact system performance, are also given.