Receiver Space Diversity in the Context of Adaptive Techniques

Our analysis is performed in the context of a study of adaptive radio techniques, in the attempt to improve link availability and transmission quality of broadband wireless systems, and especially to achieve an efficient use of radio resources. We have established our focus on spatial diversity techniques, and this paper presents a performance analysis of receiver combining techniques for indoor multipath scenarios, in the particular case of an 802.11a PHY. Even if a performance hierarchy of these techniques is established - based on diversity gain improvement - we wanted to see which combining technique is better for a particular scenario. The detailed observations will enable us to set the premises for new adaptive techniques or adaptive combinations.