New Analytical Expressions for ASEP of Modulation Techniques with Diversity Over Lognormal Fading Channels with Application to Interference-Limited Environment

In this paper, the analytical expressions of the average symbol error probability (ASEP) for both coherent and non-coherent modulation formats with diversity schemes such as maximal ratio combining (MRC), equal-gain combining (EGC), and selection combining (SC) over the lognormal (LN) distribution assuming independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) channels have been derived. The functions involving LN distribution are simplified using the Gauss–Hermit and Gaussian Quadrature integration. Furthermore, the effect of the diversity order and constellation size on the error probability has been examined extensively under various shadowing conditions such as infrequent light, average, and frequent heavy shadowing. As an application, the derived results are used to analyze the performance of the communication systems over the interference-limited environment. The impact of the number of interferers on important performance metrics such as the outage probability, the ASEP, and the channel capacity has been examined. The accuracy of the analytical results are validated by comparing them with the exact numerical results and Monte Carlo simulations. The analytical expressions are simple and easily implementable in software package such as MATLAB. The proposed analytical expressions are supposed to be a vital tool in areas such as IEEE 802.15.3a wireless communication system, indoor environment, radio channel effect by body worn devices, ultra-wideband indoor channel.