Performance of coherent square M-QAM in wireless frequency non-selective slowly fading channels

This paper deals with the theoretical symbol error rate (SER) performance analysis of coherent square M-QAM in fading channels. The channels in this paper are modeled as frequency non-selective slowly fading channels corrupted by additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). Closed form expressions for average SERs for square M-QAM in fading channels are derived and analyzed. The solutions presented are in terms of a single finite integral with an integrand composed of elementary (exponential and trigonometric) functions. Because of their simple forms, these expressions readily allow numerical evaluations for cases of practical interest. The dependence of SER performance of M-QAM on Rician parameter K and Nakagami fading parameter m are plotted and examined. The results presented are expected to provide useful information to communication systems design engineers for design and performance evaluation of radio systems over fading channels