Optimal partial decision combining in diversity systems

The optimal partial decision combiner is derived, and its performance is analyzed and compared to majority voting and selection diversity using binary noncoherent frequency-shift keying on a Rayleigh-faded additive white Gaussian noise channel. The degradation in the probability of bit error is evaluated when the channel state estimate is imperfect due to parameter quantization, AWGN, and cochannel interference. It is demonstrated that the optimal partial decision combiner can provide a simple means for improving performance on channels with limited cochannel interference