Performance study of selection diversity systems with non-identical fading branches

Error performance of a selection diversity (SD) receiver is evaluated over non-identical fading channels, where the fading statistics of individual branches are different. Bit-error rate (BER) results are directly obtained from the cumulative distribution function, which drastically reduces the complexity of analysis and simplifies BER expressions. In particular, using this approach, we are able to generate unified simple, closed-form BER expressions for different modulation schemes under non-identical fading conditions in Rayleigh and Nakagami fading channels. Theoretical results are corroborated with simulation results.