Signaling performance over a piecewise linear limited channel in the presence of interference and Gaussian noise

A model and a procedure for evaluating the bit error probability of a binary PSK signal transmitted through a band-limited piecewise linear (PWL) limited satellite channel subject to continuous wave (CW) interference as well as additive Gaussian noise are presented. The CW interference is assumed to possess a random phase over (0, 2 pi) and a fixed frequency that may be either in or out of the signal band. The analysis is performed by first formulating a conditional error probability on the uplink channel noise and the CW interference phase and then averaging over the appropriate random variables through conventional Gaussian quadrature formulas and the moment technique used by Huang et al. (1981). Numerical results for the error rate performance are compared with those of hard-limited channels. The results suggest that a PWL limited channel outperforms a hard-limited channel when the out-of-band CW interference power is close to or greater than the desired signal.