A New Representation for the Symbol Error Rate

The symbol error rate of the minimum distance detector for an arbitrary multi-dimensional constellation impaired by additive white Gaussian noise is characterized as the product of a completely monotone function with a non-negative power of the signal to noise ratio. This representation is also shown to apply to cases when the impairing noise is compound Gaussian. Using this general result, it is proved that the symbol error rate is completely monotone if the rank of its constellation matrix is either one or two. Further, a necessary and sufficient condition for the complete monotonicity of the symbol error rate of a constellation of any dimension is also obtained. Applications to stochastic ordering of wireless system performance are also discussed.