A novel unified expression for the capacity and bit error probability of wireless communication systems over generalized fading channels

Analysis of the average binary error probabilities (ABEP) and average capacity (AC) of wireless communications systems over generalized fading channels have been considered separately in past years. This paper introduces a novel moment generating function (MGF)-based unified expression for the ABEP and AC of single and multiple link communications with maximal ratio combining. In addition, this paper proposes the hyper-Fox's H fading model as a unified fading distribution of a majority of the well-known generalized fading environments. As such, the authors offer a generic unified performance expression that can be easily calculated, and that is applicable to a wide variety of fading scenarios. The mathematical formulism is illustrated with some selected numerical examples that validate the correctness of the authors' newly derived results. © 1972-2012 IEEE.