Performance analysis of noncoherent DS-CDMA systems in a Nakagami fading channel with arbitrary parameters

Code division multiple access (CDMA) systems are actively being considered for use in mobile environments (such as cellular and personal communications systems). New semianalytical expressions for the bit error rate of an asynchronous direct sequence CDMA system employing noncoherent binary demodulation formats in a Nakagami fading multipath channel are derived. Two binary demodulation schemes are considered, namely, the differential phase shift keying and the square-law demodulation with orthogonal spreading sequences. In each case the analysis assumes that an arbitrary number of independent but nonidentical resolvable paths are combined by the RAKE receiver. The results show that the effect of nonidentical fading on system performance cannot be ignored in such systems