Impact of diversity reception on fading channels with coded modulation. III. Co-channel interference

For pt.II see ibid., vol.45, no.6, p.55-67, 1997. In previous work, we have studied the impact of diversity on coded digital communication systems operating over fading channels. In particular, we have shown that diversity may be thought of as a way of making the channel more similar to a Gaussian one. The present paper extends this analysis to fading channels affected by co-channel interference (CCI). Three receiver models are examined, namely, with coherent detection and perfect channel-state information (CSI), with differential; and with pilot-tone detection. We study the effect of diversity on the irreducible error floor caused by CCI and fading, and the asymptotic behavior of the channel as the diversity order increases. Our results show that, when perfect CSI is available, diversity is able to turn asymptotically the channel into a CCI-free additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel with the same signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). On the other hand, differential and pilot-tone detection do not remove interference in the limit. Nevertheless, also with these detection schemes, diversity achieves significant gains when the SNR is large enough. Calculation of the channel cutoff rate provides guidelines for the design of coded systems with CCI in fading environments. A wide range of examples, validated by computer simulation, illustrates our conclusions.