Bit error rate analysis of diversity M-phase-shift keying receivers in Weibull fading with cochannel interference

In this study, the effect of introducing cochannel interference (CCI) on the performance of diversity receivers operating over the Weibull fading channel is thoroughly investigated. More specifically, the authors derive novel bit error rate (BER) expressions for the dual-branch selection combining (SC) and post-detection equal gain combining (EGC) diversity M-PSK receivers with possibly correlated branches operating over Weibull fading channels in presence of CCI. A characteristic function (CF)-based approach is used to achieve this goal. For the EGC correlated branches case, because of lack of existence of a closed-form expression for the CF of the sum of two Weibull random variables (RVs), the authors revert to using the Pade approximation (PA) technique to approximate this CF by a rational function and hence an approximate BER expression is obtained. Various results pertaining to the effect of fading severity of both the desired signal and the interferers, the effect of the number of interferers and the effect of correlation between diversity branches for different M-PSK modulations are presented. The obtained results are verified by comparison with Monte Carlo simulations and excellent agreement is observed.