Performance analysis of a DS/CDMA system with noncoherent M-ary orthogonal modulation in Nakagami fading

The probability of error performance of a direct sequence code-division multiple-access (DS/CDMA) system employing noncoherent M-ary orthogonal signaling in a Nakagami multipath fading channel is analyzed. A RAKE receiver structure with square-law demodulation is used at the receiver. The multiple-access interference are modeled as Gaussian and expressions derived for the exact probability of error. The performance is also evaluated in terms of the number of users that can be supported by the system at a given probability of error. The effect of correlated fading on system performance is also investigated by considering two correlation models, which can be characterized by a single correlation coefficient /spl rho/. In the first model, the correlation coefficient between any two diversity branches is constant. In the second model, it is assumed that the correlation coefficient between any two diversity branches decreases exponentially as the separation between them increases. For both models, it is found that the presence of correlation deteriorates system performance. The use of larger signal alphabets than binary modulation in conjunction with diversity reception provides a considerable performance improvement even in the presence of correlated fading.