Performance of multicode DS/CDMA with noncoherent M-ary orthogonal modulation in the presence of timing errors

The paper derives an accurate approximation to the bit error rate (BER) of multicode DS/CDMA with noncoherent M-ary modulation in wideband fading channels, when timing errors are made at the receiver. This reflects the practical scenario where the path delays are imperfectly estimated, leading to synchronization errors between the correlation receivers and the received signals. The analysis is applicable to any type of fading distribution, and is shown to match closely the Monte Carlo system simulations, especially for small timing errors.