Effects of Imperfect Reference Signal Recovery on Performance of SC and SSC Receivers over Generalized Fading Channels

This paper presents the study of the effects of imperfect reference signal recovery on the bit error rate (BER) performance of dual-branch switch-and-stay combining (SSC) and multibranch selection combining (SC) receivers in a generalized - fading channel. The average BER of binary and quaternary phase shift keying (BPSK and QPSK) is derived under the assumption that the reference carrier signal is extracted from the received modulated signal. For SSC receiver the optimal switching threshold (in a minimum BER sense) is numerically evaluated. Hereby we determine and discuss the simultaneous influence of the average signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) per bit, fading severity, product phase-locked loop (PLL) bandwidthbit duration (BLTb), switching threshold of SSC and diversity order of SC on BER performance. The influence of BLTb in different channel conditions and modulation formats is pointed out. The numerical results are confirmed by computer simulations.