Performance characterization of digital transmission systems with cochannel interference

This paper presents a general methodology for performance characterization of digital transmission systems in the presence of cochannel interference, as a function of the actual number of interferers (ranging from zero to infinity). The bit error probability in time-invariant channels and outage probability in time-varying quasi-stationary channels are discussed. More precisely, a general approach to an outage probability definition based on the concept of the outage domain is introduced. This allows the discussion of the relation to the other definitions which have appeared in the literature and the proposal of some new more accurate methods for the evaluation of outage probability. A suitable comparison between exact evaluation, the well-known Gaussian approximation, and the other new approaches proposed in this paper, is carried out to evaluate performance, bit error probability is suitably obtained for linearly modulated signals by adopting a semianalytical approach, and for nonlinear (e.g., continuous phase) modulation signals, by means of simulation. Finally, as an example, the different approaches to derive performance discussed in the paper have been applied to a linear microcellular scenario