An integrated analysis for MC‐CDMA system with synchronization errors over fading channels

Abstract

Synchronization errors and fading channels are individually considered in many previous studies. This study derives the average bit error rate (BER) of the uplink and downlink MC‐CDMA systems using equal gain combining (EGC) with synchronization errors over the fading channels. The obtained average BER of the uplink and downlink MC‐CDMA systems simultaneously considers most of the synchronization errors and the parameters of the fading channel. Since it is difficult to acquire the closed‐form of average BER, the Chernoff bound is adopted to derive the upper bound of the average BER instead. Computer simulation results show that the performance of the uplink and downlink MC‐CDMA systems are degraded by the fading channel and synchronization errors such as frequency offset, carrier phase jitter and timing jitter. This fully corresponds to theoretical derivations. Also, by comparing the uplink to the downlink systems, we conclude that the average BER of the downlink MC‐CDMA system degrades faster due to the increasing value of synchronization errors.