Probability of Error for MB-OFDM System in the Presence of Multi-path Fading and Multi-User Interference

In a multiple band orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB-OFDM) ultra-wideband (UWB) based wireless personal area network (WPAN) system, the performance is heavily affected by multiple access interference caused by nearby MB-OFDM transceivers in addition to AWGN. In this paper, we study the effect of multiple user interference on the bit error rate (BER) of MB-OFDM systems operating over frequency-selective multipath channels. We also develop a closed form approximation to the BER performance of the MB-OFDM system operation over a multipath channel subject to multiple user interference. We then demonstrate, through simulation, that the derived BER approximation is good at BER's of interest in a MB-OFDM UWB system and provide good insight into the performance of these systems in practical environments.