Performance analysis of joint switched diversity and adaptive modulation

In this paper, a simple and practical system based on a switched diversity scheme with adaptive modulation is presented. This system provides a reduced number of channel estimation while offering the optimum spectral efficiency given by a selection diversity system. In addition, the switching threshold is easily manipulated so as to make an efficient use of the tradeoff between spectral efficiency and channel estimation overhead. An extension of switched diversity into a multiuser scheduling is later also considered. This switch-based multiuser access scheme results in a lower average feedback load than that for the optimal selection-based multiuser scheme. Numerical results show that we can obtain a trade-off between spectral efficiency and the feedback load by choosing the switching threshold appropriately.