A new method for estimating the impact of interference on digital communication systems in intersystem interference analysis tools

In this paper we present a low-complexity method for estimating the impact of intersystem interference on digital radio systems. For a digital radio receiver, the bit error probability (BEP) is a widely used measure of the receiver´s performance. However, the computations necessary to determine the BEP, caused by electromagnetic interference, are often quite complicated. Hence, simplified methods are needed in computer-based tools for intersystem interference analysis. One such simplified method is to approximate the interfering signal as additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). However, this approximation is not always valid. In this work we use a higher-order statistics (HOS) measure, the kurtosis, to estimate the quality of the AWGN-approximation and also to create a method where the BEP for different kinds of interference is estimated. The method is designed to handle both modulated interfering signals as well as pulsed interference. This low-complexity method combines the kurtosis measure and the AWGN-approximation in order to obtain a better estimation of the BEP in a digital radio receiver.