Capacity Bounds for kth Best Path Selection over Generalized Fading Channels

Exact ergodic capacity calculation for fading wireless channels typically involves time-consuming numerical evaluation of infinite integrals. In this paper, lower and upper bounds on ergodic capacity for kth best path are presented. These bounds have simple analytic expressions which allow their fast evaluation. Numerical results show that the newly proposed bounds closely approximate the exact ergodic capacity for a large variety of system configurations.