Pilot-symbol-aided 16QAM with selection diversity over Rician-fading channels

This paper studies the effectiveness of incorporating an N-branch postdetection selection combining diversity reception technique in a pilot-symbol-aided (PSA) 16QAM system over frequency non-selective and frequency-selective Rician-fading channels. Simulation results have shown that the diversity improvement is more significant for higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), higher signal-to-interference ratio (SIR), smaller power ratio of direct-path signal to multipath signal (CMR), lower bit-error-rate (BER), shorter normalized delay, and higher power ratio of the main Rayleigh-faded signal to the delayed Rayleigh-faded signal (CDR). The diversity improvement is also found to be more sensitive to CDR, rather than CMR