Analysis of microdiversity and dual channel macrodiversity in shadowed fading channels using a compound fading model

Wireless channels are affected by short-term fading and long-term fading (shadowing). A compound fading model was proposed for the modeling of shadowed fading channels which resulted in a closed form solution for the probability density function (pdf) of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). This model is applied to a case where both micro- and macro-diversity schemes are implemented to mitigate short-term fading and shadowing, respectively. Using the compound fading model, it is shown that the pdf of the signal-to-noise ratio after the implementation of maximal ratio combining (MRC) at the micro level and selection combining (SC) at the macro level can be expressed in analytical form. Even when branch correlation exists, the pdf still can be expressed in analytical form. Thus, the compound pdf model offers significant improvement over approaches which use lognormal pdf for shadowing. The performance of a coherent binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modem is evaluated using this approach. The results demonstrate the simplicity and usefulness of the compound pdf in the performance analyses of shadowed fading channels even when branch correlation exists at the base station or correlation exists between base stations.