Simplified approach for symbol error rate analysis of SC-FDMA scheme over Rayleigh fading channel

Abstract

In this paper, we present a comprehensive analytical study of the symbol error rate (SER) of single-carrier frequency-division multiple access (SC-FDMA) with zero-forcing frequency domain equalization (ZF-FDE) over a Rayleigh fading channel. SC-FDMA is considered as a potential waveform candidate for fifth-generation (5G) radio access networks (RANs). First, the NC fold convolution of the noise distribution of an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) system is computed for each value of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in order to determine the noise distribution of the SC-FDMA system. NC is the number of subcarriers assigned to a user or the size of the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) precoding. Here, we present a simple alternative method of calculating the SER by simplifying the NC fold convolution using time and amplitude scaling properties. The effects of the NC fold convolution and SNR over the computation of the SER of the SC-FDMA system has been separated out. As a result, the proposed approach only requires the computation of the NC fold convolution once, and it is used for different values of SNR to calculate the SER of SC-FDMA systems.