Proposal of Simple and Accurate Two-Parametric Approximation for the Q-Function

Abstract

The approximations for the Q-function reported in the literature so far have mainly been developed to overcome not only the difficulties, but also the limitations, caused in different research areas, by the nonexistence of the closed form expression for the Q-function. Unlike the previous papers, we propose the novel approximation for the Q-function not for solving some particular problem. Instead, we analyze this problem in one general manner and we provide one general solution, which has wide applicability. Specifically, in this paper, we set two goals, which are somewhat contrary to each other. The one is the simplicity of the analytical form of Q-function approximation and the other is the relatively high accuracy of the approximation for a wide range of arguments. Since we propose a two-parametric approximation for the Q-function, by examining the effect of the parameters choice on the accuracy of the approximation, we manage to determine the most suitable parameters of approximation and to achieve these goals simultaneously. The simplicity of the analytical form of our approximation along with its relatively high accuracy, which is comparable to or even better than that of the previously proposed approximations of similar analytical form complexity, indicates its wide applicability.