In this paper novel analytical closed-form expressions for the level crossing rate (LCR) and the average fade duration (AFD) of the double κ-µ random process are presented. Capitalizing on them, second order statistics of multiple input multiple output keyhole fading channels with space-time block coding (STBC) are analyzed. Numerically obtained results are graphically presented to show the effects of various parameters such as the fading severity and number of transmit/receive antennas on the overall system’s performances.

Keywords: Level crossing rate (LCR), Average fade duration (AFD), Keyhole multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) fading channels, κ-µ fading, Multiplicative fading