Bounds and Approximations for Rapid Evaluation of Coherent MPSK Error Probabilities

The error probability for MPSK detection is expressed here as a sum of a familiar upper-bound approximation and a correction term which is well suited for numerical integration. An asymptotic expansion of the correction term is derived, from which simple and extremely tight upper and lower bounds are obtained. Relative errors in using these bounds and approximations of them are graphed for cases of practical interest.