The effect of interpolation on the BER performance of narrowband BPSK and (O)QPSK on Rician-fading channels

This paper deals with the bit error rate (BER) performance of a fully digitally implemented receiver performing coherent detection on a narrowband BPSK or (O)QPSK signal, transmitted over a slow non-frequency selective Rician fading channel. The considered digital receiver operates on samples of the received signal, taken by a fixed clock which is not synchronized to the transmitter clock. Signal samples needed for detection of the information sequence are obtained from interpolation between the available samples. In the case of nonideal interpolation a BER degradation occurs. By means of theoretical analysis, we demonstrate that even simple interpolators, operating at only a few samples per symbol, yield BER degradations that are limited to a small fraction of a dB. This paper is an extension of the work of Erup, Gardner and Harris (see ibid., vol.41, no.6, p.998-1008, 1993) where only the AWGN channel was considered and results were obtained by computer simulations