A PDF-Based Capacity Analysis of Diversity Reception Schemes over Composite Fading Channels Using a Mixture Gamma Distribution

In this paper, we analyze the ergodic capacity performance for diversity reception schemes over composite fading channels using a mixture gamma (MG) distribution. By adopting the MG distribution, various composite fading channel models can be approximated with mathematically tractable and highly accurate properties. In other words, signal- to-noise ratio statistics which contain complicated functions for each diversity reception scheme are formulated as a weighted sum of gamma distributions. With an aid of properties of the gamma distribution, we can derive closed-form expressions of an ergodic capacity for important diversity reception schemes such as maximal ratio combining and selection combining. We observe that our analysis can be expressed with the general number of receiver branches over various composite fading conditions. Simulation results verify that the derived ergodic capacity expressions match well with the empirical results.