Temporal fade reduction for fixed wireless diversity receivers with unbalanced and correlated branches

Temporal correlation between diversity branches degrades the fade mitigation expected in a multi-antenna diversity receiver. We study the case when the receive power is unequal across the diversity array. We also include the effect of correlation among the received signals. The results are of particular interest when the diversity receiver is stationary because the antennas will be unbalanced since they experience a single instantiation of the spatial fade statistics. We present a simple analytical model applicable to fixed wireless links (FWLs). Experimental results illustrate the improvement in temporal link stability resulting from the use of an equal gain combiner (EGC).