Adaptive Power Control with Selection Combiner over Nakagami-m Fading Channel

Acceptable Quality of Service (QoS) is of paramount importance in wireless communication system. However, QoS is affected by multipath propagation resulting in unreliable reception. Selection Combiner (SC) which is one of the techniques previously used to solve this problem is associated with poor performance due to fixed power level used in the technique. Hence, in this paper, an Adaptive Power Control (APC) technique using SC with a closed form expression over Nakagami-m Fading Channel is proposed. APC technique is developed using fixed power SC and Link Adaptation Algorithm (LAA). Ten thousand (10,000) bits are randomly generated and modulated using Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) scheme. The modulated signal is passed through the Square Root Raised Cosine (SRRC) filter for suitable transmission over the Nakagami-m fading channel. The faded signals at varying paths ‘L’ (2, 3, 4) are selected by Conventional Selection Combining (CSC) to instruct the transmitter for adjustment of power level based on the value of the received signal through LAA. Mathematical expression for the received signal using Probability Density Function (PDF) of Nakagami-m Fading Channel at varying paths is derived. The APC technique is simulated using MATLAB software and evaluated using Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), Outage Probability (OP) and Bit Error Rate (BER) to determine the performance of the proposed technique. OP values of 0.0969 and 0.1069 are obtained for APC and CSC, respectively, at SNR of 6 dB with L of 4, while BER values of 0.0052 and 0.2599 are obtained for APC and CSC, respectively. The percentage reduction in OP and BER are 29.79% and 54.43%, respectively. The results obtained show that APC gives lower OP and BER values with increase in SNR when compared with fixed power SC due to self-adjustment of the allocated power. Therefore, the APC technique proposed can be used to enhance the performance of wireless communication systems. Keywords — Adaptive Power Control (APC), Selection Combiner (SC), Link Adaptation Algorithm (LAA), Bit Error Rate (BER), Outage Probability (OP), Probability Density Function (PDF) and Diversity Combiner (DC).