Asymptotic BER performance of OFDM in frequency-selective Nakagami-m channels

The asymptotic error rate performance of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals in frequency-selective Nakagami-m fading channels is considered. A novel approach is provided to study the asymptotic error rate performance of a large class of modulations in general fading channels. This approach is applied to an OFDM signal on two-tap multipath Nakagami-m channels. Our analysis and numerical results show that the asymptotic error performance of an OFDM signal is similar to that of a single carrier signal transmitted over a Rayleigh fading channel. Our analysis further shows that a channel with two constant taps has similar asymptotic error rate performance to that of a one-sided Gaussian fading channel.