Design of SIMO SC-FDMA-DMWT Transceiver using Maximal-Ratio Combining in LoS Fading Channels

Abstract

In this paper single-input multiple-output (SIMO) transceivers employing single-carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access with Discrete Multi-Wavelet Transform (SC-FDMA-DMWT) for 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) uplink channels are considered. While SC-FDMA-DMWT traditionally underperforms compared to Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) in Rayleigh fading, line-of-sight (LoS) components significantly enhance its resilience to fading. This study evaluates Maximal-Ratio Combining (MRC) effectiveness for SC-FDMA-DMWT through systematic comparison with Zero-Forcing (ZF) and Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) equalizers under varying LOS power levels and antenna correlations Monte Carlo simulations perform bit processing at the level of 2×10⁶ per configuration for SNR that ranges from -5 to 25dB using realistic LTE channel models in both Rician and Rayleigh fading cases. Performance measures are BER analysis and diversity gain calculation. Results demonstrate that MRC-based SC-FDMA-DMWT achieves an 8-9dB BER improvement at 10⁻⁴ compared to conventional OFDM in LoSdominant channels. The Frequency correlation impact becomes negligible with MRC implementation, indicating optimal signal combining performance. %85-75 transmit power is reduced in Dual-antenna SIMO structures while preserving the natural low PAPR characteristics of the SC-FDMA scheme. Centralized 12- subcarrier assignments perform 4-6 dB better than decentralized 48-subcarrier settings. These results confirm that SIMO SC-FDMA-DMWT with MRC is a promising candidate for next-generation LTE uplink systems, particularly in macro and small cell deployments under dominant LoS propagation conditions.