BEP analysis of M-ary PSK modulation schemes over double Rice fading channels with EGC

In this article, the performance of M-ary phase shift keying (PSK) modulation schemes over mobile-to-mobile (M2M) fading channels with equal gain combining (EGC) in cooperative networks is analyzed. Narrowband M2M fading channels under line-of-sight (LOS) propagation conditions are modeled as double Rice processes. A dual-hop amplify-and-forward relay network, where LOS components can exist in the transmission links between the source mobile station and the destination mobile station via K mobile relays, is studied. Here, the average bit error probability (BEP) is utilized to evaluate the performance of Mary PSK modulation schemes. A simple analytical approximation for the average BEP of M-ary PSK modulations over relay-based M2M fading channels with EGC is derived. The accuracy of the approximation is assessed by simulations. The presented results show that in a dual-hop relay system with EGC, the presence of LOS components in the relay links improves the systems´ performance. In addition, a significant enhancement in the diversity gain can be achieved as the number of diversity branches K increases.