Performance evaluation of multi-carrier modulation techniques for HF frequency selective fading channel

Multipath fading in HF channels causes time-delay spread that limits the maximum symbol rate, and frequency selective fading that attenuates some frequency bands compared to others. Multi-carrier modulation techniques, multi-carrier ASK (MCASK) and multi-carrier PSK (MCPSK), can be used to ensure reliability of transmission and high data transmission rate. The bit-error rate (BER) performance is compared between single frequency modulation such as amplitude shift-keying (ASK) or phase shift-keying (PSK) and the multi-carrier modulation in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise and a combination of multipath fading and additive white Gaussian noise. On the average, the BER performance is better for the multi-carrier modulation compared to the single carrier modulation under multipath fading conditions.