Partially coherent DS-SS performance in frequency selective multipath fading

The bit-error rate (BER) performance of a direct sequence spread spectrum (DS-SS) signal, operating over a multipath Rayleigh fading channel, is investigated when corrupted by phase noise as well as additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). The phase noise arises from phase locked loop (PLL) dynamics and results in imperfect receiver phase estimates whereby the phase errors assume Tikhonov densities. The phase estimates are used by a multipath-combining RAKE receiver for demodulation. Approximate upper-bounds on the bit error probability are obtained and evaluated for different combinations of channel parameters and for various values of the average loop signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Results indicate that for a PLL with loop SNR 10 dB above the system E(b)/eta(0), the degradation is less than 3 dB, and for a loop SNR of 20 dB above E(b)/eta(0), the degradation is less than 1 dB.