Rayleigh fading compensation for QAM in land mobile radio communications

A pilot symbol-aided Rayleigh fading compensation is investigated for M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) to achieve highly spectrally efficient land mobile communication systems. The optimum parameters for fading compensation, bit error rate (BER) performance against E_b/N₀ (energy per bit to the noise power spectrum density), adjacent channel interference, and cochannel interference for 16-QAM, 64-QAM, and 256-QAM, and the spectral efficiencies for these modulation schemes in Rayleigh fading environments are investigated by computer simulation. To further verify the effect of pilot symbol-aided fading compensation from a a practical point of view, a 16-QAM modem is implemented, laboratory experiments are executed, and the impact of the dynamic range limitation due to the resolution of the analog-to-digital (A/D) converters is evaluated, along with the imperfection of the analog circuits. It is demonstrated by computer simulation and laboratory experiments that the pilot symbol-aided fading compensation can sufficiently compensate for fast varying Rayleigh fading, and 16-QAM gives the highest spectral efficiency in the case of cellular systems