SER Computation in M-QAM Systems with Phase Noise

This paper presents an exact closed-form expression for the symbol error rate of the square and rectangular quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellations, under the assumption that the transmitted and/or received signals are corrupted by the phase noise fluctuation. Phase noise is one of the most important radio frequency (RF) imperfections which usually comes from the local oscillator (LO) at the transmitter and/or receiver. In this paper, the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel is assumed. Although AWGN is a simple channel, but our exact analysis of the symbol error rate in this paper can be led to the precise study of the real communication systems in the fading channel. Hence, an exact closed-form solution for the symbol error rate is derived here as a finite summation of the two-dimensional Q-function and verified by the simulation.