Bounds and Approximations for Optimum Combining of Signals in the Presence of Multiple Co-channel Interferers and Thermal Noise

We derive an upper bound and investigate some approximations on the symbol error probability (SEP) for coherent detection of M-ary phase-shift keying, using an array of antennas with optimum combining in wireless systems in the presence of multiple uncorrelated equal-power cochannel interferers and thermal noise in a Rayleigh fading environment. Our results are general and valid for an arbitrary number of antenna elements as well as an arbitrary number of interferers. In particular, the exact SEP is derived for an arbitrary number of antennas and interferers; the computational complexity of the exact solution depends on the minimum number of antennas and interferers. Moreover, closed-form approximations are provided for the cases of dual optimum combining with an arbitrary number of interferers, and of two interferers with an arbitrary number of antenna elements. We show that our bounds and approximations are close to Monte Carlo simulation results for all cases considered in this paper.