A general method for calculating error probabilities over fading channels

This paper presents a general method for calculating the average error rates and outage performance of a broad class of coherent, differentially coherent and noncoherent communication systems with/without diversity reception in a myriad of fading environments. Unlike the moment generating function (MGF) technique, the proposed characteristic function (CHF) method based on Parseval´s theorem enables us to unify the average error rate analysis of different modulation formats and all commonly used predetection diversity techniques (i.e., maximal-ratio combining (MR), equal-gain combining (EG), selection diversity (SD), switched diversity (SW) and hybrid diversity systems) in a single common framework. The CHF method also lends itself to the averaging of the conditional error probability (CEP) involving the complementary incomplete Gamma function and the confluent hypergeometric function over fading amplitudes, which heretofore resisted to a simple form. As an aside, we show previous results as special instances of our unified framework