On the performances of MC-CDMA over frequency-selective Nakagami-m fading channels with correlated and independent subcarriers

In this paper, the system performance of MC-CDMA over frequency-selective Nakagami-m fading channel is analyzed. Bit error rates are obtained for an uplink MC-CDMA system with MRC reception, in which both correlated and independent subcarrier scenarios are considered and compared. In the literature independency among subcarriers was often assumed in MC-CDMA performance study in the presence of Nakagami-m fading. Our results show, however, that a frequency-selective Nakagami-m fading channel model may have been overemphasized for MC-CDMA compared to a frequency-selective Rayleigh fading model when, this independency is addressed.