The effect of sample timing on bit error rate performance in a multipath fading channel

Digital mobile radio often suffers from fatal effects caused by frequency-selective fading, resulting in severe bit error rate (BER) degradation. The feasibility of digital mobile radio largely depends on the multipath-distortion tolerant capability of modulation technique. The BER performance is compared among four digital modulation techniques in a frequency selective fading channel with large multipath delay spread. In particular, taking the timing fluctuation of eye patterns due to delay distortion of a fading channel into account, the effect of sample timing on BER is analyzed. The analyses have revealed that BER performance markedly depends on the choice of sample timing, and also an interesting fact that BPSK is outstanding in the multipath-distortion tolerance, if coupled with adaptive sampling, and its BER curves remain almost the same as that of frequency-flat fading as long as multipath delay difference is less than a bit interval.