Optimum Combining of Rician-Faded Signals: Analysis in the Presence of Interference and Noise

This paper analyzes the performance of optimum combining systems in the presence of both co-channel interference and thermal noise, addressing the case where the desired-user undergoes Rician fading. Exact expressions are derived for the moment generating function of the SINR which apply for arbitrary numbers of antennas and interferes. Based on these, we obtain expressions for the symbol error probability with M-PSK. We also derive exact closed-form expressions for the moments of the SINR, and show that they are directly related to the corresponding moments of a Rayleigh system via a simple scaling parameter. Numerical results are presented to validate the analysis, and to examine the impact of Rician fading.