Penalty of hybrid diversity for two-dimensional signaling in Rayleigh fading

Lower and upper bound expressions for the penalty of hybrid diversity used with any two-dimensional (2-D) signaling constellation with polygonal decision regions are derived. Using these bounds with well-known results for maximal ratio combining, the error probability performance of 2-D signaling with hybrid selection/maximal ratio combining can be approximated to a high accuracy. Index Terms--Diversity, fading channels, maximal ratio combining (MRC), selection combining (SC), symbol-error probability (SEP).