Outage Performance of QAM Digital Radio Using Adaptive Equalization and Switched Space Diversity Reception

Recently, the ability of anti-fading measures to reduce the outage which occurs on digital microwave radio links has been the subject of considerable study. Ideal and nonideal adaptive equalization in both the time and frequency domain have been evaluated for nondiversity reception using various performance criteria. Ideal adaptive equalization and space diversity reception have been considered using a recently published model of multipath fading on space diversity radio channels. In this paper, we determine the outage of 16-QAM and 64-QAM digital radio systems using adaptive slope equalization, finite-tap decision feedback equalization, and switched space diversity reception. The outage is evaluated by computing the probability of occurrence of those channel realizations which cause the bit error rate to exceed a critical value. The dependence of the outage prediction on the equalization method and the outage defining criterion is investigated by also considering ideal adaptive equalization and a signal-to-distortion ratio, respectively.