Performance of a pilot symbol-aided technique in frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channels corrupted by co-channel interference and Gaussian noise

In the current digital cellular systems, modulation with low spectral efficiency such as π/4-quaternary-phase-shift keying (π/4-QPSK) or Gaussian-minimum-shift keying (GMSK) are usually used. To cope with the ever-increasing demands for system capacity, modulation such as 16-ary modulation (16QAM) or 16-ary phase-shift keying (16PSK) are expected to be used in future. The paper studies the effects of a pilot symbol-aided (PSA) technique on the performance of 16QAM and 16PSK in frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channels corrupted by co-channel interference and Gaussian noise. The PSA technique employs both the pilot symbols and data symbols for fading estimation. Computer simulation results have shown that significant improvements on bit-error rate performance of the signals can be achieved through the use of the PSA technique