We study the efficiency of two-qubit mixed entangled states as resources for quantum teleportation. We first consider two maximally entangled mixed states, viz., the Werner state\cite{werner}, and a class of states introduced by Munro {\it et al.} \cite{munro}. We show that the Werner state when used as teleportation channel, gives rise to better average teleportation fidelity compared to the latter class of states for any finite value of mixedness. We then introduce a non-maximally entangled mixed state obtained as a convex combination of a two-qubit entangled mixed state and a two-qubit separable mixed state. It is shown that such a teleportation channel can outperform another non-maximally entangled channel, viz., the Werner derivative for a certain range of mixedness. Further, there exists a range of parameter values where the former state satisfies a Bell-CHSH type inequality and still performs better as a teleportation channel compared to the Werner derivative even though the latter violates the inequality.
Mixed-state entanglement and quantum teleportation through noisy channels