A Performance Monitoring Technique for Arbitrary Noise Statistics

A technique for monitoring performance of a pilottone phase-shift-keyed system over fading channels is treated. An important feature of this technique is that it requires no prior knowledge of the statistics of the additive noise or interference. The error probability is estimated without interrupting the data transmission or sending a special test signal. The measurement time required for a reliable estimate of error probability is determined for both Gaussian and lognormal additive noise. It is shown that the necessary measurement time depends strongly on the statistics of the noise, the order of diversity, and the actual error probability.