Error Rate Analysis of Uplink MC-CDMA Systems under Imperfect Channel Estimation

Theoretical error rate performance of wireless communication systems are usually determined assuming that the perfect channel state information (CSI) is available at the receiver. However, in actual practice, the channel gains at the receiver are obtained via using some channel estimation (CE) techniques. Due to inherent presence of noise, the CE is not perfect resulting in the performance degradation. In this paper, we evaluate the error rate performance of an uplink multicarrier code-division multiple-access (MC-CDMA) system, considering different modulation techniques, where CE is performed using pilot symbol assisted (PSA) minimum mean-square error (MMSE) CE technique. The symbol error rate (SER) analysis of an uplink MC-CDMA system using multiuser detection techniques, such as MMSE and zero forcing (ZF), is presented under imperfect CE. Simulated results for SER are also shown to confirm the accuracy of the analytically derived results.