Channel capacity of adaptive transmission with maximal ratio combining in correlated Rayleigh fading

We derive closed-form expressions for the single-user capacity of maximal ratio combining diversity systems taking into account the effect of correlation between the different branches. We consider a Rayleigh fading channel with two kinds of correlation: 1) equal branch signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) and the same correlation between any pair of branches and 2) unequal branch SNRs and arbitrary correlation between branches such that the eigenvalues of the branch covariance matrix are all distinct. Three adaptive transmission schemes are analyzed: 1) optimal simultaneous power and rate adaptation; 2) optimal rate adaptation with constant transmit power; and 3) channel inversion with fixed rate.