Wireless Pers Commun (2013) 71:2181–2195 DOI 10.1007/s11277-012-0930-x Outage Probability Analysis of Selection and Switch-and-Stay Combining Diversity Receivers Over the α-μ Fading Channel with Co-Channel Interference Mahmoud H. Ismail · Refaat Mohamed Published online: 18 November 2012 © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2012 Abstract In this paper, we evaluate the performance of two dual-branch diversity tech- niques operating over the α -μ fading channel in presence of a dominant co-channel interferer with a minimum desired signal power constraint. These two diversity schemes are selection combining and switch-and-stay combining. We derive expressions for the outage probability in both cases, which are very simple to calculate numerically using the commercially avail- able mathematical packages. The obtained expressions are valid for integer values of the parameter μ and, in many special cases, they reduce to either a closed form or to expressions with finite-limit integrals that can also be easily evaluated. Also, our expressions reduce to previously published well-known results for the Rayleigh as well as the Weibull fading chan- nels as special cases. We present a set of numerical results which show the effect of fading severity of both the desired signal and the interferer on the performance. Keywords Diversity receivers · α - μ fading · Co-channel interference · Selection combining · Switch-and-stay combining 1 Introduction Dual-branch diversity receivers are probably the most practically realizable diversity schemes in wireless mobile communications as the continuous downsizing of mobile handsets does not usually allow for deploying more than two antennas on the handsets. Among the well- known diversity schemes, selection combining (SC) and switch-and-stay combining (SSC) are the simplest to implement since the receiver processes the information from a single branch only, unlike other diversity schemes such as maximal-ratio combining (MRC) or equal-gain combining (EGC), which process the information from all the diversity branches simultaneously [1, Ch. 9]. M. H. Ismail (B ) · R. Mohamed Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, Giza 12613, Egypt e-mail: mismail@eece.cu.edu.eg 123