Analysis and simulation of diversity receiving bit error performance in tropospheric scatter communication

Tropospheric scatter as a promising communication for over-the-horizon between remote geographic areas, has regained its predominance in military wireless communication recently when considering cable systems are not feasible. However, since the propagation path loss is relatively high, the troposcatter (short for tropospheric scatter) system must rely on highpower transceivers. Diversity reception is the most effective method to smooth channel deep fading and suppress large signal fluctuation. In this paper, the multipath diversity reception architecture model of troposcatter is established at first, which aims to analyze the diversity receiving performance. Focusing on maximal ratio combing (MRC), we derive the exact expression of the average bit error performance of binary phase shift keying (BPSK) and quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) under single-channel reception or diversity reception in the flat or selective fading channels. More importantly, we investigate and simulate the anti-fading performance of diversity receiving based on MRC over fading channel. Numerical and simulation results demonstrate diversity promotes the receiving performance of anti-multipath fast fading. When diversity multiplicity increases, the average bit error rate (BER) of the system will decrease continuously, to improve the reliability of the troposcatter communication.