CTH16-3: Optimum Detection of Binary Signals in Rayleigh Fading Channels with Imperfect Channel Estimates

The optimum detection of binary antipodal signals in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels with Gaussian channel estimation error has been studied in prior work. In this paper, we present the optimum detector based on the maximum- likelihood criterion for binary orthogonal signals in the presence of Gaussian distributed channel estimation error and AWGN. It is shown that the optimum detector is a linear combination of the optimum coherent and optimum noncoherent detectors. We derive the exact closed-form expression of the average bit error probability of the proposed optimum detector in Rayleigh fading channels with AWGN. It is found that if the variance of channel estimation error for a given average SNR is greater than a threshold, then orthogonal signalling outperforms antipodal modulation, and the analytical expression of this threshold is derived.