Performance analysis of DS/CDMA with noncoherent M-ary orthogonal modulation in multipath fading channels

The performance of a DS/CDMA system using M-ary orthogonal modulation with noncoherent demodulation is evaluated. The system operates in a multipath fading channel. A RAKE receiver structure with equal gain combining is used for demodulation. An approximation to the bit error probability is given which depends only on the first- and second-order moments of the multipath energies. The analysis results are compared with the results from computer simulations. It is seen that the approximation is accurate for multipath energies with realistic coefficient of variation. The system performance is also evaluated in terms of the capacity, which is defined as the number of users that can be supported at a given bit error probability. The approximation is used to evaluate the capacity reductions due to power variations caused by multipath fading