  The performance of maximal ratio combining (MRC) in Rayleigh channels with
co-channel interference (CCI) is well-known for receive arrays which are
co-located. Recent work in network MIMO, edge-excited cells and base station
collaboration is increasing interest in macrodiversity systems. Hence, in this
paper we consider the effect of macrodiversity on MRC performance in Rayleigh
fading channels with CCI. We consider the uncoded symbol error rate (SER) as
our performance measure of interest and investigate how different
macrodiversity power profiles affect SER performance. This is the first
analytical work in this area. We derive approximate and exact symbol error rate
results for M-QAM/BPSK modulations and use the analysis to provide a simple
power metric. Numerical results, verified by simulations, are used in
conjunction with the analysis to gain insight into the effects of the link
powers on performance.
