Reliability of quantum-mechanical communication systems

We are concerned with the detection of a set of messages that are transmitted over a channel disturbed by chaotic thermal noise when quantum effects in the communication systems are taken into account. Our attention is restricted to the special case in which the density operators specifying the state of the received field are commutative. In particular, the performance of two special communication systems is evaluated. For a system in which orthogonal signals with known amplitudes and random phases are transmitted over an additive white Gaussian channel, the structure of an optimum receiver is found. Expressions for the system reliability function and channel capacity are derived. For a system in which orthogonal signals are transmitted over a Rayleigh fading channel, the optimum performance is obtained. The optimum degree of diversity for an equal-strength diversity system is found numerically as a function of the average thermal-noise energy and information rate.