Effect of Matrix Partitioning on Second Order Statistics of Fading Channels

In this paper, the expressions for level crossing rate and average fade duration of two-branch selection combining are derived using the proposed matrix partitioning based method for a space-diversity system using a two-branch horizontal linear antenna array at the mobile station. It has been observed that when the antennas are perpendicular to the direction of the vehicle motion, the average fade duration is not very much dependent on the antenna spacing and is almost identical to that for independent fading except for very small antenna spacing. On the other hand, when the antennas are parallel to the direction of the vehicle motion, the level crossing rate can be reduced below the value obtained for independent fading, although the average fade duration deteriorates, especially for small antenna spacing. Numerical results are presented and compared with the existing characteristic function based methods including Gaussian fluctuation effects.