1312 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 54, NO.

4, JULY 2005
Analysis of Transmit Antenna
Selection/Maximal-Ratio Combining in Rayleigh
Fading Channels
Zhuo Chen, Member, IEEE, Jinhong Yuan, Member, IEEE, and Branka Vucetic, Fellow, IEEE
AbstractIn this paper, we investigate a multiple-input-
multiple-output (MIMO) scheme combining transmit antenna
selection and receiver maximal-ratio combining (the TAS/MRC
scheme). In this scheme, a single transmit antenna, which maxi-
mizes the total received signal power at the receiver, is selected for
uncoded transmission. The closed-form outage probability of the
system with transmit antenna selection is presented. The bit error
rate (BER) of the TAS/MRC scheme is derived for binary phase-
shift keying (BPSK) in at Rayleigh fading channels. The BER
analysis demonstrates that the TAS/MRC scheme can achieve a
full diversity order at high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), as if all
the transmit antennas were used. The average SNR gain of the
TAS/MRC is quantied and compared with those of uncoded re-
ceiver MRC and space-time block codes (STBCs). The analytical
results are veried by simulation. It is shown that the TAS/MRC
scheme outperforms some more complex space-time codes of the
same spectral efciency. The cost of the improved performance is a
low-rate feedback channel. We also show that channel estimation
errors based on pilot symbols have no impact on the diversity order
over quasi-static fading channels.
Index TermsAntenna selection, diversity, fading channels,
maximal-ratio combining, space-time code.
I. INTRODUCTION
R
ECENT papers [1], [2] have demonstrated that a multiple-
input-multiple-output (MIMO) system can signicantly
increase systemcapacity and improve performance. The MIMO
channels can be exploited to increase the bandwidth efciency
through the layered structure [3] or to achieve a full diver-
sity order through space-time coding techniques, such as space-
time block codes (STBCs) [4], [5], and space-time trellis codes
(STTCs) [6]. Because of the size and power limitations, most of
the current handheld devices can accommodate only one or at
most two antennas. Therefore, for high data rate downlink trans-
mission, a high diversity order is possible only if space-time
codes with a large number of transmit antennas are employed at
Manuscript received August 20, 2003; revised June 09, 2004. This project
is proudly supported by the Innovation Access Programme-International Sci-
ence and Technology, under the Australian Governments innovation statement,
Backing Australias Ability. It is also supported by Australian Research Council
(ARC) Grant DP0345271, by SingTel Optus Pty Limited, and by UNSW Fac-
ulty Research Grant (FRG). The review of this paper was coordinated by Prof.
A. Annamalai.
Z. Chen and B. Vucetic are with the School of Electrical & Informa-
tion Engineering, the University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia (e-mail:
zhuochen@ee.usyd.edu.au; branka@ee.usyd.edu.au).
J. Yuan is with the School of Electrical Engineering & Telecommunications,
the University of New South Wales, NSW 2052, Australia (e-mail: jinhong@
ee.unsw.edu.au).
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TVT.2005.851319
the base station. However, design and implementation of such
space-time codes is challenging. For STBCs with complex con-
stellations, a full code rate can be achieved only for two transmit
antennas [5]. For STTCs, the code design for a large number
of transmit antennas is computationally difcult [7][11], and
maximum-likelihood decoding becomes very complex. On the
other hand, a conventional multiple-antenna systemrequires the
number of radio frequency (RF) chains to be equal to the total
number of antennas, which presents a hardware challenge in
terms of complexity and cost. Therefore, a scheme with a small
number of antennas at the mobile set and simple receiver com-
plexity as well as a reduced number of RF chains is desirable
for downlink transmission.
It is well known that maximal-ratio combining (MRC) [12]
is the optimal linear combining technique. However, with re-
ceiver MRC, most of the system complexity concentrates at
the receiver side. To decrease the receiver complexity in terms
of the number of RF chains, a simple suboptimal combining
scheme, referred to as selection combining (SC), was proposed
in [13], in which only one receive antenna with the largest
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is selected for demodulation. The
SC scheme has been extended to the cases where the signals
on more than one receive antenna with the largest instantaneous
SNRs are combined [14][19]. This scheme is referred to as
hybrid selection/maximal-ratio combining (HS/MRC) in [16].
The main feature of an HS/MRC scheme is the reduction of the
number of RF chains but not the number of antennas deployed
at the mobile set for downlink transmission.
In this paper, we investigate a transmit antenna selection
(TAS) scheme with MRC at the receiver [20]. A single trans-
mit antenna, which maximizes the total received signal power
at the receiver, is selected for uncoded transmission. We refer
to it as the TAS/MRC scheme. The contribution of this paper
resides in both the closed-formanalytical results and the numer-
ical comparisons. The outage probability, which is indicative of
performance, is rst derived. Then we derive a closed-form bit
error rate (BER) expression for the TAS/MRC. Based on the
BER expression, it is shown that the TAS/MRC scheme can
asymptotically achieve a full diversity order, although only a
single transmit antenna is selected for transmission. The aver-
age SNRgain of the TAS/MRCis quantied and compared with
those of uncoded receiver MRC and STBCs. Extensive simu-
lation results are presented to validate the analysis. Through
this paper, the cases of practical interest with one and two re-
ceive antennas are highlighted. With a specied diversity order
as the system design target, the TAS/MRC scheme can deploy
0018-9545/$20.00 2005 IEEE
CHEN et al.: ANALYSIS OF TRANSMIT ANTENNA SELECTION/MAXIMAL-RATIO COMBINING IN RAYLEIGH FADING CHANNELS 1313
Fig. 1. An (L
t
, 1; L
r
) TAS/MRC system.
most of the antennas at the transmitter side with a single RF
chain regardless of a potentially large number of transmit an-
tennas. At the mobile set, the simplicity of MRC with a small
number of receive antennas can be maintained. Therefore, the
TAS/MRC scheme is suitable for downlink communications in
cellular radio systems.
In this paper, we mainly focus on the error performance of
the TAS/MRC scheme, instead of capacity. For the capacity
issue related to the antenna selection in MIMOchannels, several
excellent references could be found [21][27].
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. System
and channel model is introduced in Section II. The outage proba-
bility is evaluated in Section III. The BER performance analysis
of the TAS/MRC system is presented in Section IV, followed
by the simulation results and discussion in Section V. The feed-
back requirement and channel estimation issues are dealt with
in Section VI. Finally, we present conclusions in Section VII.
II. SYSTEM AND CHANNEL MODEL
We consider a wireless link in a at Rayleigh fading envi-
ronment equipped with L
t
transmit and L
r
receive antennas.
If at any time, N (N L
t
) transmit antennas are selected and
activated for transmission, and all the other transmit antennas
are inactive, we refer to it as an (L
t
, N; L
r
) system. Similarly,
(L
t
; L
r
, M) denotes a system with receive antenna selection
only, in which M (M L
r
) receive antennas are selected for
reception. By contrast, (L
t
, L
r
) denotes a system without an-
tenna selection, in which all the L
t
transmit and L
r
receive
antennas are used. For a fair comparison, the schemes with and
without transmit antenna selection are assumed to have the same
total radiated power.
In this paper, we consider an (L
t
, 1; L
r
) TAS/MRC system in
at Rayleigh fading channels, which is illustrated in Fig. 1. Let
Hdenote the L
r
L
t
channel matrix. Its entries are the fading
coefcients h
i,j
, 1 i L
t
, 1 j L
r
, which are modeled
as independent samples of complex Gaussian random variables
with a zero mean and the variance of 0.5 per dimension. An
L
r
1 vector h, which is a column of H, is used to denote the
channel between the single selected transmit antenna and L
r
receive antennas. The single selected transmit antenna, denoted
Fig. 2. The frame structure.
by I, is determined by
I = argmax
1iL
t
_
_
_
C
i
=
L
r

j=1
[h
i,j
[
2
_
_
_
(1)
which maximizes the total received signal power. Through a
feedback channel, the value of I is available to the transmit-
ter. It is well known that the output SNR of a maximal-ratio
combiner, also referred to as post-processing SNR, is just the
sum of the SNRs at different receive antennas [28]. Therefore,
the selection criterion in (1) is equivalent to maximizing the in-
stantaneous post-processing SNR. This justies the optimality
of the selection criterion. The selection criterion of maximizing
the total received power has been widely adopted in the system
with antenna selection, such as [14], [20], and [29][32].
The frame structure of transmission is presented in Fig. 2. In
each frame, pilot symbols are followed by data. Note that only
a single RF chain is available at the transmitter. Therefore, pilot
symbol block P
i
, 1 i L
t
, are transmitted from each trans-
mit antenna at different time slots, starting with the transmission
of P
1
from transmit antenna 1 and ending with the transmission
of P
L
t
from transmit antenna L
t
. Each pilot symbol block P
i
has the same number of pilot symbols. The total number of pilot
symbols across all the pilot symbol blocks within one frame is
dened as training length. At the receiver, channel estimation
is conducted based on the pilot symbols. In this paper, we as-
sume that fading channels vary slowly and fading coefcients
are kept constant within one frame and change independently
from one frame to another. This fading model is referred to as
quasi-static fading. It is also assumed that there is no feedback
error or delay. To isolate the problem of system performance
analysis from that of channel estimation, we rst assume that
the channel state information (CSI) is perfectly available to the
receiver.
At any time instant t, if the uncoded signal x is transmitted
over the single selected antenna, the received signal vector can
be expressed as
y = hx +n (2)
where y = (y
1
, y
2
, . . . , y
L
r
)
T
is the received signal vector,
n = (n
1
, n
2
, . . . , n
L
r
)
T
is the noise vector, and superscript
()
T
denotes the transpose. The complex additive white Gaus-
sian noise (AWGN) on the jth receive antenna, denoted by n
j
,
1 j L
r
, has the one-side power spectral density of N
0
.
We rearrange the random variables C
i
, 1 i L
t
, in as-
cending order of magnitude and denote them by C
(l)
, where
1 l L
t
and C
(1)
C
(2)
C
(L
t
)
. According to (1),
the transmit antenna corresponding to the L
t
th order statistic,
C
(L
t
)
, will be selected for transmission.
1314 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 54, NO. 4, JULY 2005
In a at Rayleigh MIMO channel, C
i
are independent identi-
cally distributed (i.i.d.) chi-squared variables with 2L
r
degrees
of freedom. The probability density function (pdf) of C
i
is given
by [28]
p(x) =
1
(L
r
1)!
x
L
r
1
e
x
, x 0 (3)
and the cumulative distribution function (cdf) is given by [28]
P(x) = 1 e
x
L
r
1

i=0
x
i
i!
, x 0. (4)
Therefore, the pdf of C
(L
t
)
is [33]
p
(L
t
)
(x) = L
t
[P(x)]
L
t
1
p(x)
=
L
t
(L
r
1)!
_
1 e
x
L
r
1

i=0
x
i
i!
_
L
t
1
x
L
r
1
e
x
.
(5)
III. OUTAGE PROBABILITY
In this section, the closed-form outage probability of the
(L
t
, 1; L
r
) system in at Rayleigh fading channels is derived
and compared with the MIMO systems without antenna selec-
tion.
A general instantaneous capacity expression for an (L
t
, L
r
)
MIMO system over a fading channel is given by [2]
C(SNR) = log
2
det
_
I
L
r
+
SNR
L
t
HH
H
_
bits/s/Hz, (6)
where I
L
r
is an L
r
L
r
identity matrix and SNR denotes
the signal-to-noise ratio per receive antenna. Superscript ( )
H
denotes the transpose conjugate. The outage probability, de-
noted by P
out
, is dened as the probability that the instan-
taneous capacity C is less than a given capacity R, i.e.,
P
out
= PrC(SNR) < R [1].
For an (L
t
, 1; L
r
) system, the selection criterion in (1) is
assumed. We have its outage probability as
P
out
(R, SNR) = Pr
_
log
2
_
1 +SNR|h|
2
F
_
< R
_
= Pr
_
C
(L
t
)
<
2
R
1
SNR
_
(7)
where | |
F
denotes Frobenius norm. Let
y =
2
R
1
SNR
(8)
the outage probability in (7) can be expressed as
P
out
(R, SNR)
=
_
y
0
p
(L
t
)
(x) dx
=
L
t
(L
r
1)!
L
t
1

k=0
(1)
k
_
L
t
1
k
_k(L
r
1)

t=0
b
t
(L
r
, k)

_
e
(k+1)y
L
r
+t1

j=0
j!
_
L
r
+t 1
j
_
(k + 1)
j+1
y
L
r
+tj1
+
(L
r
+ t 1)!
(k + 1)
L
r
+t
_
(9)
in which b
t
(L
r
, k) is the coefcient of z
t
, t = 0, 1, . . . , k(L
r

1), in the expansion of

_
L
r
1

i=0
z
i
i!
_
k
. (10)
For the (L
t
, 1; 1) case, we have b
t
(L
r
= 1, k) = 1. Therefore,
P
out
(R, SNR)
= L
t
L
t
1

k=0
(1)
k
_
L
t
1
k
_
k + 1
_
1 e
(k+1)y
_
= (2
R
1)
L
t
_
1
SNR
_
L
t
+ o
_
SNR
L
t
_
, SNR 1.
(11)
We write
f(x) = o[g(x)], as x x
0
(12)
if
lim
xx
0
f(x)
g(x)
= 0. (13)
For the (L
t
, 1; 2) case, (10) can be simplied as

k
t=0
(
k
t
)z
t
,
fromwhich we have b
t
(L
r
= 2, k) = (
k
t
). Therefore, the outage
probability (9) in this case can be simplied as
P
out
(R, SNR)
= L
t
L
t
1

k=0
(1)
k
_
L
t
1
k
_
k

t=0
_
k
t
_

_
_
e
(k+1)y
t+1

j=0
j!
_
t +1
j
_
(k + 1)
j+1
y
t+1j
+
(t + 1)!
(k + 1)
t+2
_
_
=
(2
R
1)
2L
t
2
L
t
_
1
SNR
_
2L
t
+ o(SNR
2L
t
), SNR 1.
(14)
In general, for SNR 1, (9) can be written as
P
out
(R, SNR) =
(2
R
1)
L
t
L
r
(L
r
!)
L
t
_
1
SNR
_
L
t
L
r
+o(SNR
L
t
L
r
). (15)
This indicates that an (L
t
, 1; L
r
) system can potentially
achieve a full diversity order.
CHEN et al.: ANALYSIS OF TRANSMIT ANTENNA SELECTION/MAXIMAL-RATIO COMBINING IN RAYLEIGH FADING CHANNELS 1315
For the (L
t
, L
r
) MIMO system, the general closed-form out-
age probability expression is difcult to derive. For the purpose
of illustration, we only consider the (L
t
, 1) case. Here, we have
P
out
(R, SNR)
= Pr
_
log
2
_
1 +
SNR
L
t
|H|
2
F
_
< R
_
= Pr
_
|H|
2
F
<
2
R
1
SNR/L
t
_
= 1
e
y
(L
t
1)!
L
t
1

k=0
k!
_
L
t
1
k
_
y
L
t
k1
, y =
2
R
1
SNR/L
t
=
L
L
t
t
L
t
!
(2
R
1)
L
t
_
1
SNR
_
L
t
+ o(SNR
L
t
) (16)
for SNR 1.
For a meaningful comparison, let us consider a symmetric
system that has one transmit and L
t
receive antennas. It is de-
noted by (1, L
t
). Similarly, the outage probability for (1, L
t
)
can be derived as
P
out
(R, SNR)
= 1
e
y
(L
t
1)!
L
t
1

k=0
k!
_
L
t
1
k
_
y
L
t
k1
, y =
2
R
1
SNR
=
L
L
t
t
L
t
!
(2
R
1)
L
t
_
1
L
t
SNR
_
L
t
+ o(SNR
L
t
) (17)
for SNR 1.
The comparison between (11), (16), and (17) shows that
(1, L
t
) receive diversity and (L
t
, 1; 1) transmit antenna se-
lection is superior to (L
t
, 1) transmit diversity by 10 log L
t
and 10 log(L
t
/(L
t
!)
1/L
t
) dB, respectively, in terms of the out-
age probability. The outage probability comparison for R = 1
bit/s/Hz between (L
t
, 1), (L
t
, 1; 1), and (1, L
t
) is illustrated in
Fig. 3 for L
t
= 2 and 4. The gure clearly shows the supe-
riority of an (L
t
, 1; 1) system with transmit antenna selection
over an (L
t
, 1) system without antenna selection. Also note that
an (L
t
, 1; 1) system with single transmit antenna selection is
equivalent to a (1; L
t
, 1) system with single receive antenna
selection. And a (1; L
t
, 1) system is worse than a (1, L
t
) sys-
tem without antenna selection in terms of outage probability.
Therefore, it is natural that (L
t
, 1; 1) has worse performance in
terms of outage probability than (1, L
t
). In general, if L
t
> 1,
an (L
t
, L
r
) systemincurs an SNRloss, when compared with the
benchmark (1, L
t
L
r
), due to the power distribution across the
transmit antennas [34]. The (L
t
, 1; L
r
) system has the potential
to reduce this SNRloss dramatically, as evidenced by the outage
probability.
IV. ERROR PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF THE
TAS/MRC SCHEME
In this section, a closed-form BER expression for a binary
phase-shift keying (BPSK) (L
t
, 1; L
r
) TAS/MRC system is de-
Fig. 3. Outage probability comparison between (L
t
, 1), (L
t
, 1; 1), and
(1, L
t
), 1 bit/s/Hz.
rived for at Rayleigh fading channels. Based on the BER ex-
pression, the asymptotic performance at high SNRs will be in-
vestigated. Furthermore, the average SNRgain of the TAS/MRC
will be quantied and compared with those of uncoded receiver
MRC and STBCs of the same diversity order.
A. Exact BER for the TAS/MRC Scheme
According to [28], for a (1, L
r
) MRC system with L
r
receive
antennas, an asymptotic diversity order of L
r
is achieved and
the instantaneous post-processing SNR,
b
, is given by

b
=
L
r

j=1
[h
1,j
[
2
(18)
in which = E
b
/N
0
, where E
b
is the average energy per bit at
the transmitter.
For the (L
t
, 1; L
r
) TAS/MRC scheme with BPSK modula-
tion, the BER can be expressed as [28]
P
2
=
_

0
Q(
_
2
b
)p

b
(
b
) d
b
(19)
where
b
in this case is given by

b
= C
(L
t
)
(20)
and the pdf of C
(L
t
)
is given in (5). With
b
dened in (20), we
have
p

b
(
b
) =
1

p
(L
t
)
_

_
. (21)
1316 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 54, NO. 4, JULY 2005
Substituting (5) and (21) into (19) and letting x =
b
/
reaches
P
2
=
L
t
(L
r
1)!
L
t
1

k=0
_

0
Q(
_
2x)(1)
k
_
L
t
1
k
_
e
(k+1)x
_
L
r
1

i=0
_
x
i
i!
_
_
k
x
L
r
1
dx. (22)
After variable transforms and multinomial expansion [35][37],
following ([38], (3.63)), the integral in (22) can be further written
as
_

0
Q(
_
2x)(1)
k
_
L
t
1
k
_
e
(k+1)x
_
L
r
1

i=0
_
x
i
i!
_
_
k
x
L
r
1
dx
=
(1)
k
_
L
t
1
k
_
[2(k + 1)]
L
r

k(L
r
1)

t=0
_
_
a
t
(L
r
, k)(L
r
+ t 1)!

_
1
_

+ k + 1
_
L
r
+t

L
r
+t1

j=0
2
j
_
L
r
+ t 1 + j
j
_

_
1 +
_

+ k + 1
_
j
_
_
(23)
where a
t
(L
r
, k) is the coefcient of z
2t
, t = 0, 1, . . . , k(L
r

1), in the expansion of

_

_
L
r
1

i=0
_
z
2
2(k+1)
_
i
i!
_

_
k
. (24)
Therefore, the exact BER expression of an (L
t
, 1; L
r
)
TAS/MRC system can be written as
P
2
=
L
t
(L
r
1)!
L
t
1

k=0
_
(1)
k
_
L
t
1
k
_
[2(k + 1)]
L
r

k(L
r
1)

t=0
_
a
t
(L
r
, k)(L
r
+ t 1)!

_
1
_

+ k + 1
_
L
r
+t

L
r
+t1

j=0
2
j
_
L
r
+ t 1 + j
j
_

_
1 +
_

+ k + 1
_
j
_
_
. (25)
B. Asymptotic Performance
In practical downlink transmission, most of the handsets can
only accommodate one or at most two antennas. Therefore, the
performance of the cases with one and two receive antennas will
be highlighted.
First we investigate the (L
t
, 1; 1) TAS/MRC, in which there
is only one receive antenna. For this case, we have a
t
(L
r
=
1, k) = 1, and the BER in (25) becomes
P
2
= L
t
L
t
1

k=0
(1)
k
_
L
t
1
k
_
2(k + 1)
_
1
_

+ k + 1
_
. (26)
This expression is the same as the BER for a (1; L
t
, 1) receive
antenna selection system presented in [39]. This could be eas-
ily understood because of the symmetry of the two systems.
Considering
lim

P
2

L
t
=
(2L
t
1)!
2
2L
t
(L
t
1)!
(27)
we see that the BER in (26) can be approximated as
P
2

(2L
t
1)!
2
2L
t
(L
t
1)!
_
1

_
L
t
, 1. (28)
From (28), it is observed that the BER decreases inversely with
the L
t
th power of . This means that an asymptotic diversity
order of L
t
is achieved by the (L
t
, 1; 1) TAS/MRC, as if all the
transmit antennas were used.
Next, we investigate the (L
t
, 1; 2) TAS/MRC. For L
r
= 2,
(24) can be simplied as
k

t=0
_
k
t
_
[2(k + 1)]
t
z
2t
(29)
from which we have
a
t
(L
r
= 2, k) =
_
k
t
_
[2(k + 1)]
t
. (30)
Similarly, (25) becomes
P
2
=
L
t
4
L
t
1

k=0
_
_
_
(1)
k
_
L
t
1
k
_
(k + 1)
2

t=0
_
(t + 1)!
_
k
t
_
[2(k + 1)]
t
_
1
_

+ k + 1
_
t+2

t+1

j=0
2
j
_
t + j + 1
j
__
1 +
_

+ k + 1
_
j
_
_
_
_
(31)
from which we have
lim

P
2

2L
t
=
(4L
t
1)!
2
5L
t
(2L
t
1)!
. (32)
CHEN et al.: ANALYSIS OF TRANSMIT ANTENNA SELECTION/MAXIMAL-RATIO COMBINING IN RAYLEIGH FADING CHANNELS 1317
This means that if 1, (31) can be approximated as
P
2

(4L
t
1)!
2
5L
t
(2L
t
1)!
_
1

_
2L
t
(33)
which indicates a full diversity order of 2L
t
.
In general, we nd that for the (L
t
, 1; L
r
) TAS/MRCscheme,
(25) can be written as
P
2
=
(2L
t
L
r
1)!
2
2L
t
L
r
(L
r
!)
L
t
(L
t
L
r
1)!
_
1

_
L
t
L
r
+ o(
L
t
L
r
)
(34)
for 1. This suggests that a full diversity order of L
t
L
r
is
achieved asymptotically, as predicted by the outage probability
in Section III.
C. Average SNR Gain Comparison With Receiver MRC
and STBCS
It has been shown that the (L
t
, 1; L
r
) TAS/MRC could
achieve a full diversity order of L
t
L
r
, which is the same as
for (1, L
t
L
r
) MRC and (L
t
, L
r
) STBC. To compare the error
performance of these three schemes, the average SNR gain of
each scheme is considered. The average SNR gain is dened as
the ratio between the average post-processing SNR, E
b
, and
, where E denotes expected value.
For the (L
t
, 1; L
r
) TAS/MRC, the average SNR gain is the
expected value of C
(L
t
)
in (20). With the pdf of C
(L
t
)
given in
(5), we obtain the corresponding average SNR gain as
E
_
C
(L
t
)
_
=
L
t
(L
r
1)!
L
t
1

k=0
(1)
k
_
L
t
1
k
_

k(L
r
1)

t=0
b
t
(L
r
, k)(L
r
+ t)!
(k + 1)
L
r
+t+1
(35)
where b
t
(L
r
, k) is dened in Section III.
Let L
r
= 1, we have b
t
(L
r
= 1, k) = 1, and the average SNR
gain for the (L
t
, 1; 1) TAS/MRC can be simplied as
E
_
C
(L
t
)
_
= L
t
L
t
1

k=0
(1)
k
_
L
t
1
k
_
(k + 1)
2
=
L
t

k=1
1
k
. (36)
This expression is the same as that in ([13] (5.2-8)) for a
(1; L
t
, 1) SC scheme.
Let L
r
= 2, we have b
t
(L
r
= 2, k) = (
k
t
), and the average
SNR gain for the (L
t
, 1; 2) TAS/MRC becomes
E
_
C
(L
t
)
_
= L
t
L
t
1

k=0
(1)
k
_
L
t
1
k
_
k

t=0
_
k
t
_
(t + 2)!
(k + 1)
t+3
.
(37)
For (1, L
t
L
r
) uncoded receiver MRC, we obtain from (18)
that the corresponding average SNR gain is
E
_
_
_
L
t
L
r

j=1
[h
1,j
[
2
_
_
_
= L
t
L
r
. (38)
For an (L
t
, L
r
) STBC, the SNR at the combiner output is
given by [4]

b
=

L
t
|H|
2
F
=

L
t
L
t

i=1
L
r

j=1
[h
i,j
[
2
(39)
from which we obtain its average SNR gain as
E
_
_
_
1
L
t
L
t

i=1
L
r

j=1
[h
i,j
[
2
_
_
_
= L
r
. (40)
The average SNR gains of the (L
t
, 1; 1) and (L
t
, 1; 2)
TAS/MRC schemes are compared with the receiver MRC and
STBCs of the same diversity order in Fig. 4. In Fig. 4(a), we see
that the (1,2) MRC, (2,1;1) TAS/MRC, and (2,1) STBC have an
average SNR gain of 2, 1.5, and 1, respectively. Therefore, the
(1,2) MRC is 1.25 dB superior to the (2,1;1) TAS/MRC, and the
(2,1;1) TAS/MRC is 1.75 dB superior to the (2,1) STBC. When
the diversity order is increased to 4, the advantage is 2.83 and
3.17 dB, respectively. Fig. 4(b) shows that the (1,4) MRCis 1.63
dB superior to the (2,1;2) TAS/MRC, and the (2,1;2) TAS/MRC
is 1.37 dB superior to the (2,2) STBC.
V. SIMULATION RESULTS
In this section, we illustrate the analytical and simulation
performance for the TAS/MRC scheme in at Rayleigh fading
channels.
Fig. 5 presents the comparison of the exact expression in
(26), the approximation in (28), and the simulation for (2,1;1),
(3,1;1), and (4,1;1) TAS/MRC schemes, all for BPSK modula-
tion. The gure clearly shows that the analytical results match
the simulation ones. It also indicates that (26) asymptotically
approaches (28), which is a tight bound of (26) at high SNRs.
Fig. 6 illustrates the comparison of the exact expression in
(31), the approximation in (33), and the simulation for (2,1;2),
(3,1;2), and (4,1;2) TAS/MRCschemes with BPSKmodulation.
It can also be observed that, at high SNRs, (33) gives a good
approximation of (31).
Fig. 7 gives the performance of the TAS/MRC schemes
compared with the STBCs of the same diversity order for BPSK.
It shows that the (2,1;1) TAS/MRC scheme gives a 1.6 dB im-
provement over the Alamouti scheme [4] with a single receive
antenna. The gain has been increased to 2.8 dB for the (4,1;1)
TAS/MRCcompared with the (4,1) STBC[5]. It also shows that
the (2,1;2) TAS/MRC scheme gives around 1 dB improvement
over the Alamouti scheme with two receive antennas. These
results are consistent with those predicted in Fig. 4.
Fig. 8 presents the performance comparison for 4-PSK
modulation between the TAS/MRC schemes and the STTCs of
1318 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 54, NO. 4, JULY 2005
Fig. 4. Average SNR gain comparison. (a) Diversity order L
t
. (b) Diversity order 2L
t
.
Fig. 5. Comparison of the exact expression, approximation, and simulation
for a single receive antenna, BPSK.
Fig. 6. Comparison of the exact expression, approximation, and simulation
for two receive antennas, BPSK.
CHEN et al.: ANALYSIS OF TRANSMIT ANTENNA SELECTION/MAXIMAL-RATIO COMBINING IN RAYLEIGH FADING CHANNELS 1319
Fig. 7. Performance comparison of the TAS/MRC schemes with the STBCs
of the same diversity order, BPSK.
the same diversity order. In Fig. 8, the frame size is 130 data
symbols and performance is evaluated in terms of frame error
rate (FER). In the gure, E
s
denotes the average total energy
per symbol at the transmitter. Fig. 8 shows that, for a single
receive antenna and at the FER of 10
3
, the (2,1;1) TAS/MRC
scheme is by 0.7 dB superior to the 8-state STTC ([40], Table I)
with two transmit antennas, and the (3,1;1) TAS/MRC scheme
is around 1 dB better than the 32-state STTC ([7], Table I)
with three transmit antennas. To the best of our knowledge,
the STTCs presented here for comparison are the best available
codes in the literature for a single receive antenna.
Figs. 7 and 8 show that the uncoded (L
t
, 1; L
r
) TAS/MRC
can provide better performance than STBCs and some complex
STTCs with L
t
transmit and L
r
receive antennas.
Note that the BER analysis for BPSK can also be extended
directly to higher modulation schemes. We only consider the
TAS/MRC with uncoded transmission, but an extension to
coded transmission is straightforward.
The results of the TAS/MRC suggest that transmit antenna
selection with more than one active transmit antenna can be
combined with other well known space-time coding schemes,
such as STBCs and STTCs. In such systems, we can use a
good space-time code designed for a small number of transmit
antennas and achieve a higher diversity order by antenna
selection at the transmitter. The error performance of these two
schemes have been investigated in [32] and [31]. It was found
that these two schemes, similar to the TAS/MRC scheme, also
achieve a full diversity order, as if all the transmit antennas were
used. Therefore, transmit antenna selection provides a new
approach to the design of MIMO systems with a high diversity
order based on the existing diversity-achieving schemes.
Fig. 8. Performance comparison of the TAS/MRC schemes with the STTCs
of the same diversity order, 4-PSK.
VI. FEEDBACK REQUIREMENT AND CHANNEL ESTIMATION
It has been shown that the TAS/MRC scheme can provide
a full diversity order and signicantly decrease the mobile set
complexity by deploying most of the antennas at the trans-
mitter side. However, a feedback link has to be provided. The
transmitter only needs to know which single transmit antenna
is selected and activated whenever channel condition changes.
The feedback information, which is determined at the receiver
side based on the calculation of (1), has log
2
L
t
| bits, where
x| denotes the minimum integer not smaller than x. For exam-
ple, an (L
t
, 1; L
r
) TAS/MRC system with L
t
= 4 only needs 2
bits of feedback. For a MIMO system working in a quasi-static
at fading channel at a high data rate, the feedback transmission
rate is comparatively low.
In the performance analysis, the perfect CSI is assumed at the
receiver. In a real system, the CSI has to be estimated based on
pilot signals, as shown in Fig. 2. If channel estimation error hap-
pens, it will degrade the system performance. Fig. 9 illustrates
the impact of channel estimation on the performance with var-
ious training lengths in quasi-static fading channels for BPSK
modulation. In the simulation, a frame size of 130 data bits is
assumed. Fig. 9 shows that for the (2,1;1) TAS/MRC, the train-
ing with length 4 incurs a 1.7 dB performance loss at the BER
of 10
5
compared with the case with perfect CSI. Increasing the
training length from 4 to 10 decreases the SNR loss to 0.7 dB
at the BER of 10
5
. For the (2,1;2) TAS/MRC, the loss due to
channel estimation error is 2.0 and 1.2 dB for training lengths
4 and 10, respectively. Fig. 9 shows that the channel estima-
tion error has no impact on the diversity order. For a frame size
of 130, extra 4 and 10 training bits will incur an SNR penalty
by 0.13 and 0.32 dB, respectively. This SNR penalty has been
accounted for in the performance curves.
1320 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 54, NO. 4, JULY 2005
Fig. 9. The impact of channel estimation on the performance with different
training lengths, BPSK.
VII. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we investigated a transmit antenna selection
scheme in which a single antenna is selected for uncoded trans-
mission among L
t
transmit antennas with MRC at the receiver
side. Compared with the HS/MRC scheme, this scheme can
dramatically reduce the system complexity at the mobile set for
downlink transmission. We derived the exact BER expression
for the BPSK TAS/MRC scheme in at Rayleigh fading chan-
nels, and showed by analysis and simulation that this scheme
can achieve a full diversity order. Analysis and simulation
results also showed that the TAS/MRC scheme signicantly
outperforms the STBCs of the same diversity order with the
same number of receive antennas. Simulation revealed that the
TAS/MRC scheme can provide better performance than some
complex STTCs. It has also been demonstrated that channel
estimation based on pilot symbols only slightly degrades per-
formance with a short training length and has no impact on the
diversity order.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank O. Tang of SingTel Optus
Pty Limited for valuable discussions and helpful comments in
the preparation of this paper. They would also like to thank Y.
Li, Z. Zhou, and K. L. Lo for helpful discussions.
REFERENCES
[1] I. E. Telatar, Capacity of multi-antenna Gaussian channels, Eur. Trans.
Telecommun., vol. 10, pp. 585595, Nov./Dec. 1999.
[2] G. J. Foschini and M. J. Gans, On limits of wireless communications
in a fading environment when using multiple antennas, Wireless Pers.
Commun., vol. 6, pp. 311335, Mar. 1998.
[3] G. J. Foschini, Layered space-time architecture for wireless communi-
cation in a fading environment when using multi-element antennas, Bell
Labs. Tech. J., vol. 1, pp. 4159, Autumn 1996.
[4] S. M. Alamouti, A simple transmit diversity technique for wireless
communications, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun., vol. 16, pp. 14511458,
Oct. 1998.
[5] V. Tarokh, H. Jafarkhani, and A. R. Calderbank, Space-time block codes
from orthogonal designs, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, vol. 45, pp. 1456
1467, Jul. 1999.
[6] V. Tarokh, N. Seshadri, and A. R. Calderbank, Space-time codes
for high data rate wireless communication: Performance criterion and
code construction, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, vol. 44, pp. 744765, Mar.
1998.
[7] Z. Chen, B. S. Vucetic, J. Yuan, and K. L. Lo, Space-time trellis codes
for 4-PSK with three and four transmit antennas in quasi-static at fading
channels, IEEE Commun. Lett., vol. 6, pp. 6769, Feb. 2002.
[8] Z. Chen, B. Vucetic, J. Yuan, and K. L. Lo, Space-time trellis codes
for 8-PSK with two, three, and four transmit antennas in quasi-static at
fading channels, Electron. Lett., vol. 38, pp. 462464, May 2002.
[9] Q. Yan and R. S. Blum, Improved space-time convolutional codes for
quasi-static slowfading channels, IEEETrans. Wireless Commun., vol. 1,
pp. 563571, Oct. 2002.
[10] B. Abdool-Rassool, F. Heliot, L. Revelly, R. Nakhai, and H. Aghvami,
4-PSK space-time trellis codes with ve and six transmit antennas for
slowRayleigh fading channels, Electron. Lett., vol. 39, pp. 297299, Feb.
2003.
[11] B. Vucetic and J. Yuan, Space-Time Coding. New York: Wiley, 2003.
[12] D. G. Brennan, Linear diversity combining techniques, Proc. IRE,
vol. 47, pp. 10751102, Jun. 1959.
[13] W. C. Jakes Jr., Microwave Mobile Communications. Piscataway, NJ:
IEEE Press, 1994.
[14] T. Eng, N. Kong, and L. B. Milstein, Comparison of diversity combining
techniques for Rayleigh-fading channels, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 44,
pp. 11171129, Sep. 1996.
[15] N. Kong and L. B. Milstein, Average SNR of a generalized diversity
selection combining scheme, IEEE Commun. Lett., vol. 3, pp. 5759,
Mar. 1999.
[16] M. Z. Win, R. K. Mallik, G. Chrisikos, and J. H. Winters, Canonical
expressions for the error probability performance of M-ary modulation
with hybrid selection/maximal-ratio combining in Rayleigh fading, in
Proc. IEEE WCNC99, New Orleans, LA, Sep. 1999, pp. 266270.
[17] M. Z. Win and J. H. Winters, Analysis of hybrid selection/maximal-ratio
combining in Rayleigh fading, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 47, pp. 1773
1776, Dec. 1999.
[18] , Virtual branch analysis of symbol error probability for hybrid
selection/maximal-ratio combining in Rayleigh fading, IEEE Trans.
Commun., vol. 49, pp. 19261934, Dec. 2001.
[19] B. A. Bjerke, Z. Zvonar, and J. G. Proakis, Antenna diversity combining
schemes for WCDMAsystems in fading multipath channels, IEEETrans.
Wireless Commun., vol. 3, pp. 97106, Jan. 2004.
[20] S. Thoen, L. Van der Perre, B. Gyselinckx, and M. Engels, Performance
analysis of combined transmit-SC/receive-MRC, IEEE Trans. Commun.,
vol. 49, pp. 58, Jan. 2001.
[21] D. A. Gore, R. U. Nabar, and A. Paulraj, Selecting an optimal set of trans-
mit antennas for a low rank matrix channel, in Proc. IEEE ICASSP00,
Jun. 2000, pp. 27852788.
[22] A. F. Molisch, M. Z. Win, and J. H. Winter, Capacity of MIMOsystems
with antenna selection, in Proc. IEEE ICC01, Helsinki, Finland, Jun.
2001, pp. 570574.
[23] R. S. Blum and J. H. Winters, On optimum MIMO with antenna
selection, in Proc. IEEE ICC02, New York, Apr. 2002, pp. 386390.
[24] , On optimumMIMOwith antenna selection, IEEECommun. Lett.,
vol. 6, pp. 322324, Aug. 2002.
[25] A. Gorokhov, D. Gore, and A. Paulraj, Performance bounds for antenna
selection in MIMO systems, in Proc. IEEE ICC03, Anchorage, May
2003, pp. 30213025.
[26] , Receive antenna selection for MIMO at-fading channels: Theory
and algorithms, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, vol. 49, pp. 26872696, Oct.
2003.
[27] A. F. Molisch and M. Z. Win, MIMO systems with antenna selection,
IEEE Microw. Mag., vol. 5, pp. 4656, Mar. 2004.
[28] J. G. Proakis, Digital Communications, 3rd ed., NewYork: McGraw-Hill,
1995.
[29] D. A. Gore and A. J. Paulraj, MIMO antenna subset selection with
space-time coding, IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 50, pp. 25802588,
Oct. 2002.
[30] A. Ghrayeb and T. M. Duman, Performance analysis of MIMO systems
with antenna selection over quasi-static fading channels, IEEE Trans.
Veh. Technol., vol. 52, pp. 281288, Mar. 2003.
CHEN et al.: ANALYSIS OF TRANSMIT ANTENNA SELECTION/MAXIMAL-RATIO COMBINING IN RAYLEIGH FADING CHANNELS 1321
[31] Z. Chen, B. Vucetic, and J. Yuan, Space-time trellis codes with transmit
antenna selection, Electron. Lett., vol. 39, pp. 854855, May 2003.
[32] Z. Chen, J. Yuan, B. Vucetic, and Z. Zhou, Performance of Alamouti
scheme with transmit antenna selection, Electron. Lett., vol. 39, pp. 1666
1668, Nov. 2003.
[33] H. A. David, Order Statistics. New York: Wiley, 1970.
[34] M. K. Simon, A moment generating function (MGF)-based approach
for performance evaluation of space-time coded communication systems,
Wireless Commun. Mobile Comput., vol. 2, pp. 667692, Nov. 2002.
[35] P. M. Hahn, Theoretical diversity improvement in multiple frequency
shift keying, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 10, pp. 177184, Jun. 1962.
[36] A. Annamalai and C. Tellambura, Error rates for Nakagami-m fad-
ing mutlichannel reception of binary and M-ary signals, IEEE Trans.
Commun., vol. 49, pp. 5868, Jan. 2001.
[37] , A moment-generating function (MGF) derivative-based unied
analysis of incoherent diversity reception of M-ary orthogonal signals
over independent and correlated fading channels, Int. J. Wireless Inf.
Netw., vol. 10, pp. 4155, Jan. 2003.
[38] S. Verdu, Multiuser Detection. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University
Press, 1998.
[39] M. Kavehrad and P. J. McLane, Performance of low-complexity channel
coding and diversity for spread spectrum in indoor, wireless communica-
tions, AT&T Tech. J., vol. 64, pp. 19271965, Oct. 1985.
[40] Z. Chen, B. Vucetic, J. Yuan, and K. L. Lo, Space-time trellis codes with
two, three and four transmit antennas in quasi-static at fading channels,
in Proc. IEEE ICC02, New York, Apr. 2002, pp. 15891595.
Zhuo Chen (S01M05) was born in Sichuan,
China, in 1977. He received the B.S. degree in elec-
trical engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong Univer-
sity, Shanghai, China, in 1997. He received the M.S.
and Ph.D. degrees from the School of Electrical and
Information Engineering, the University of Sydney,
Australia, in 2001 and 2004, respectively.
A list of his publications is available from
www.ee.usyd.edu.au/zhuochen. His research inter-
ests include wireless communications, multiple-
input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems, space-time
coding, and error control coding techniques.
Dr. Chen was awarded the Electrical Engineering Foundation Award for
Excellence in Teaching (Tutoring) from the University of Sydney in 1999.
Jinhong Yuan (S96A97M03) received the B.E.
and Ph.D. degrees in electronics engineering from
the Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China,
in 1991 and 1997, respectively.
From 1997 to 1999, he was a Research Fellow at
the School of Electrical and Information Engineer-
ing, the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. In
2000, he joined the School of Electrical Engineer-
ing and Telecommunications, the University of New
South Wales, Sydney, Australia, where he is currently
a Senior Lecturer.
A list of his publications is available from http://www.ee.unsw.edu.
au/jinhong. His current research interests include information theory, wire-
less communications, error control coding, and digital modulations.
Branka Vucetic (M83SM00F03) received the
B.S.E.E., M.S.E.E., and Ph.D. degrees in electri-
cal engineering from the University of Belgrade,
Belgrade, Serbia, in 1972, 1978, and 1982, respec-
tively.
During her career, she has held various research
and academic positions in Yugoslavia, Australia, and
U.K. Since 1986, she has been with the Sydney Uni-
versity School of Electrical and Information Engi-
neering, Sydney, Australia, where she is currently
the Head of the School of Electrical and Information
Engineering and the Director of the Telecommunications Laboratory. In the
past decade, she has been working on a number of industry-sponsored projects
in wireless communications and mobile Internet. She has taught a wide range
of undergraduate, postgraduate, and continuing education courses worldwide.
She has published three books and more than 200 papers in telecommuni-
cations journals and conference proceedings. Her research interests include
wireless communications, digital communication theory, coding, and multiuser
detection.