Abstract
We obtain in this paper generic expressions in M for the exact bit-error rate of the generalized hierarchical 2/4//spl middot//spl middot//spl middot//M-phase-shift keyed constellations over additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and fading channels. For the AWGN case, these expressions are in the form of a weighted sum of Pawula F-functions and are solely dependent on the constellation size M, the carrier-to-noise ratio, and a constellation parameter which controls the relative message importance. The mathematical expressions are illustrated with some select numerical examples.