Simplified approach for symbol error rate analysis of SC ‐ FDMA scheme over Rayleigh fading channel

In this paper, we present a comprehensive analytical study of the symbol error rate ( SER ) of single‐carrier frequency‐division multiple access ( SC ‐ FDMA ) with zero‐forcing frequency domain equalization ( ZF ‐ FDE ) over a Rayleigh fading channel. SC ‐ FDMA is considered as a potential waveform candidate for fifth‐generation (5G) radio access networks ( RAN s). First, the N C fold convolution of the noise distribution of an orthogonal frequency‐division multiplexing ( OFDM ) system is computed for each value of the signal‐to‐noise ratio ( SNR ) in order to determine the noise distribution of the SC ‐ FDMA system. N C is the number of subcarriers assigned to a user or the size of the discrete Fourier transform ( DFT ) precoding. Here, we present a simple alternative method of calculating the SER by simplifying the N C fold convolution using time and amplitude scaling properties. The effects of the N C fold convolution and SNR over the computation of the SER of the SC ‐ FDMA system has been separated out. As a result, the proposed approach only requires the computation of the N C fold convolution once, and it is used for different values of SNR to calculate the SER of SC ‐ FDMA systems.