Asymptotic performance for orthogonal signalling on fading, non-Gaussian channels

This paper is aimed at studying the impact of the noise distribution on the limit performance. Even though the situation where the signal set size tends to infinity is a merely ideal one, since it assumes communication with no finite-bandwidth constraint, it is of relevant theoretical interest to assess whether increased signal space dimensionality and hence larger transmission bandwidth can be traded at will for enhanced communication reliability. Some results about detection in compound-Gaussian noise are summarised. A general relationship, true for any noise probability density function and signal amplitude fluctuation law, is given. It is shown that noise spikiness affects the limit performance dramatically, even in nonfading channels