On the Performance of MRC Receivers in UAV-to-Ground Channels With Shadowing

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are expected to become a major component of the beyond fifth-generation (5G) cellular networks in order to provide ubiquitous connectivity. Recently, new statistical fading channel models for UAV-to-ground communications have been introduced to represent shadowing effects in the channel. In this letter, we derive the average bit error rate (ABER), ergodic capacity, and outage probability of a receiver using maximal ratio combining (MRC) operating in independent UAV-to-ground channels based on the moment generating function (MGF). Moreover, the effects of the UAV-to-ground fading model parameters on the system performance have been illustrated via numerical results. By using Monte Carlo simulations, we finally verify all the theoretical expressions.