Maximal Ratio Combining Diversity Analysis of Underwater Acoustic Communications Subject to $κ-μ$ Shadowed Fading Channels

Abstract: In this paper, a novel unified analytical expression for average bit error rates (ABER) and average channel capacity (ACC) is presented for the ${\kappa}-{\mu}$ shadowed fading model. This new shadowed fading model has shown to be suitable for underwater wireless channel modeling for the measurements conducted by the Naval Research Laboratory, and is not so well covered in the public literature. Deploying the Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC) receiver, a new simple analytical expression for the probability density function (PDF) of the receiver output signal to noise ratio is presented. Based on this new PDF, the novel unified ABER and ACC expression derived. To further generalize the error rate analysis, the additive white generalized Gaussian noise model is assumed that models the different noise environments. The new unified expression is accurate, simple and generic, and is suitable for MRC analysis in this generalized shadowed fading and noise environment. Numerical techniques and published results from the technical literature corroborate the generality and accuracy of our analysis under the different test scenarios.