Performance analysis of a hybrid SEC/MRC diversity scheme over Rayleigh fading

Diversity is an effective technique to improve wireless communication performance. In this paper, we propose a dual hybrid diversity scheme in which connected branches are switched in order to determine whether a dual branch should be combined via maximal-ratio combining (MRC) in multi-branch. This scheme provides improved performance along additional diversity branch available, without requiring a signal power. Also, it achieves additional performance gain by adaptive switching thresholds. We find a threshold according to the transmit signal power for a switching criterion of diversity branches. This information is then used to obtain the bit error rate in multi-branch with the proposed scheme. In particular, we consider the independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) Rayleigh fading on each diversity branch. Finally, we discuss the results through simulations.