Outage analysis of equal-gain combiner over shadowed-rice fading channels

Land mobile satellite (LMS) channels can be modelled accurately by the shadowed-Rice (SR) fading model. Recently, an approximate SR model is proposed by the author for LMS channels. Compared with the existing models, the proposed model is analytically tractable and makes it possible to approximate very accurately the probability density function (PDF) of the SR random variable (RV) by a finite weighted sum of Rice PDFs. In this paper and relying on the proposed model, the statistics of the sum of independent SR RVs is studied. While this problem is well understood for common fading models such as the Rayleigh, Rice, and Nakagami, a minor attention has been devoted to the SR case. In this paper, the PDF and the Cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the sum of independent SR RVs are derived in the form of infinite, convergent series using well-known Beaulieu series approach. In this regard, the coefficients of the Beaulieu series are calculated for the case of SR fading channels in analytical, closed-form expressions, and hence, the CDF and the PDF of the sum of independent SR RVs are derived. The derived statistics are used to analyze the performance analysis of equal-gain combining (EGC) diversity receiver operating over independent SR fading channels and novel closed-form expression for the outage probability is developed.