Error rate analysis of M-PSK with equal gain combining over Nakagami fading channels

We present a new analytical approach to determine the exact average symbol error rate (SER) of M-ary phase-shift-keying signals with coherent equal gain combining (EGC) reception. The analysis assumes independent Nakagami-m fading paths which are not necessarily identically distributed. The proposed approach takes advantage of an alternate integral representation of the conditional SER along with Gauss-Hermite quadrature integration, to derive the final average SER expression in the form of a single finite-range integral and an integrand composed of tabulated functions. We also present a simpler but approximate approach for the closed-form evaluation of the SER of these signals over independent identically distributed Nakagami-m fading paths.