Asymptotic SER Analysis of EGC and SC in Fading and Non - Gaussian Noise and Interference

In this paper, the authors present a unified asymptotic Symbol Error Rate (SER) analysis for linearly modulated signals with Equal Gain Combining (EGC) and Selection Combining (SC) at the receiver. Their analysis is general enough to encompass all commonly used fading models and (possibly) non-Gaussian noise (and interference). They show that for high Signal-to-Noise Ratios (SNRs) the SER of EGC and SC depends on the Mellin transform of the probability density function (pdf) of the noise. Since the Mellin transform can be readily obtained for all commonly encountered noise pdfs, the provided SER expressions are easy and fast to evaluate.