Receiver Decorrelator for Dual Antenna Diversity Systems

Diversity systems are widely used in wireless communications to compensate for signal fading. Antenna diversity systems use multiple transmitter antennas and/or multiple receiver antennas to transmit the signal along different paths which are then combined at the receiver end. Performance is reduced by correlation between antennas, but decorrelation is an impractical solution in most cases.

For the special case of dual diversity, University of Alberta researchers have developed a decorrelating pre-processor that can be easily and economically implemented. The invention does not require intricate measurement and analysis of the channel state but rather incorporates simple adder circuits as signal pre-processors ahead of diversity combining in selective combining (SC) and switch and stay combining (SSC) systems. The decorrelation pre-processing improves performance in correlated Rician and Rayleigh fading at minimal cost.

• Simplified process of realizing better performance using decorrelation
• Cost effective and easily integrates into existing technology
• Better average BER, outage probability and mean SNR in correlated Rician and Rayleigh fading than conventional SC and SSC receiver
• Particularly useful in portable devices where space constraints may dictate the use of correlated diversity branches