Error statistics in data transmission over fading channels

In this paper, we investigate the behavior of block errors which arise in data transmission on fading channels. Our approach takes into account the details of the specific coding/modulation scheme and tracks the fading process symbol by symbol. It is shown that a Markov approximation for the block error process (possibly degenerating into an identically distributed (i.i.d.) process for sufficiently fast fading) is a good model for a broad range of parameters. Also, it is observed that the relationship between the marginal error rate and the transition probability is largely insensitive to parameters such as block length, degree of forward error correction and modulation format, and depends essentially on an appropriately normalized version of the Doppler frequency. This relationship can therefore be computed in the simple case of a threshold model and then used more generally as an accurate approximation. This observation leads to a unified approach for the channel modeling, and to a simplified performance analysis of upper layer protocols.