Performance Comparison of M-QAM Communications for (S + N) and (S/N) Channel State Estimation Schemes

Abstract

Channel estimation at the receiver side is essential for adaptive modulation schemes, prohibiting low complexity systems from using variable rate (VR) and/or variable power transmissions. This problem can be solved using variable-rate M-QAM modulation scheme for communications over fading channels in the absence of channel gain estimation at the receiver. It is shown that signal plus noise (S + N) sampling value can serve as a much better criterion compared to signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) for determining modulation order in VR systems. In this way, low complexity transceivers use VR transmissions to improve spectrum efficiency under an error performance constraint. Two kinds of fading channels: Weibull fading and α–μ fading are considered. Spectrum efficiency of (S + N) based systems are compared to that of S/N systems and the advantage of (S + N) scheme over (S/N) scheme is shown. The symbol error rates of two schemes are also studied. As an application, the proposed VR modulation scheme is shown to work with a maximum ratio combining diversity receiver.