We introduce an adaptive generalized selection combining (A-GSC) receiver that can be efficiently applied in diversity rich fading environments such as in ultra-wideband applications. The branches that participate in the combining process are selected taking into account the quality of both the total combining output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the individual SNR of each branch. The proposed scheme achieves better adaptation to channel conditions compared to other competing schemes such as normalized threshold GSC (NT-GSC), minimum selection GSC (MS-GSC) or minimum estimation and combining GSC (MEC-GSC), with no further complexity. The A-GSC receiver compromises between the power consumption, hardware complexity and performance gain that each additional diversity branch induces, resulting in significant savings in power and computational resources.
Athanasios S. Lioumpas, George K. Karagiannidis, T