Theoretical bit error floor analysis of 16 QAM OFDM signal with channel estimation using polynomial interpolation

Abstract : This paper deals with a bit error rate (BER) floor performance analysis for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems using pilot-aided channel estimation with polynomial interpolations.Such a performance analysis has been previously undertaken in the literature, but is limited to binary phase shift keying (BPSK) and 4-quadrature amplitude modulation (4-QAM) constellations.The main contribution of this paper is then to analyze the BER floor achieved by a 16-QAM OFDM signal in a Rayleigh channel. To achieve this, the binary error probability is obtained by carrying out the analysis on maximum significant bits (MSB) and least significant bits (LSB). The MSB leads to the similar results as those obtained in 4-QAM, but very specific developments are required to obtain the error probability of the LSB. Numerical results show that the proposed BER performanceanalysis is valid for the 16-QAM constellation.