Performance study of scan-and-wait combining over Nakagami-q (Hoyt) fading channels

The performance of scan-and-wait combining (SWC) over independent non-identically distributed (i.n.d.) slow and flat Nakagami-q (Hoyt) fading channels is examined. The outage probability and average output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) expressions are derived. Also, the bit-error rate expression for the SWC with different binary modulation schemes over the i.n.d. Hoyt-fading channels is presented. It is shown that the SWC can perform better than the maximal-ratio combining and selection combining with the same number of channel estimates when the predetermined SNR threshold values are optimized. However, the SWC scheme has a drawback of time delay for retransmission of signals.