A general moment generating function for MRC diversity over fading channels with Gaussian channel gains

For maximal ratio combining (MRC) diversity over correlated fading channels with Gaussian channel gains, we utilize unitary diagonalization of the channel covariance matrix to decorrelate the physical channels into uncorrelated virtual channels to obtain the moment generating function (MGF) of the received signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR). The MGF thus obtained has a compact form and can be universally applied to various popular fading models. In addition to the advantage of simple derivation procedure, this general MGF can be readily modified to express various scenarios of channel power distributions as well as joint fading models. To demonstrate these advantages, we use the generalized Ricean fading as a specific example to compare our derivation and our MGF expression with an existing work in the literature. Again, we present numerical simulations for MRC reception of binary phase shift keying (BPSK) signals over Nakagami fading to compare with existing results appearing in the literature. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.