The equivalent transmission-path model-a tool for analyzing error floor characteristics due to intersymbol interference in Nakagami-Rice fading environments

Land mobile radio systems such as car telephones and handy personal terminals used outdoors have enjoyed a remarkable evolution. To design reliable mobile radio systems, however, it is vital to have a good understanding of the impact of wave propagation characteristics on digital transmission quality in a wide variety of mobile radio environments. A very simple but general scheme for calculating irreducible bit error rate (BER) (namely, BER floor) due to intersymbol interference in frequency-selective Nakagami-Rice fading environments has been developed. The scheme, which we call the equivalent transmission-path model, plays a role in connecting wave propagation with digital transmission characteristics in a general manner. Through computer simulations assuming various types of delay profiles, we first identify key parameters of Nakagami-Rice fading dominating principally the occurrence of irreducible errors and we develop a simple method for the calculation of irreducible BER utilizing the nature or the key parameters. Then we examine the accuracy of the scheme for various types of phase-shift keying (PSK) transmission systems. Finally, based on the scheme, we show calculation examples of BER floor characteristics in line-of-sight fading environments.