  In-phase/quadrature-phase Imbalance (IQI) is considered a major
performance-limiting impairment in direct-conversion transceivers. Its effects
become even more pronounced at higher carrier frequencies such as the
millimeter-wave frequency bands being considered for 5G systems. In this paper,
we quantify the effects of IQI on the performance of different modulation
schemes under multipath fading channels. This is realized by developing a
general framework for the symbol error rate (SER) analysis of coherent phase
shift keying, noncoherent differential phase shift keying and noncoherent
frequency shift keying under IQI effects. In this context, the moment
generating function of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio is first
derived for both single-carrier and multi-carrier systems suffering from
transmitter (TX) IQI only, receiver (RX) IQI only and joint TX/RX IQI.
Capitalizing on this, we derive analytic expressions for the SER of the
different modulation schemes. These expressions are corroborated by comparisons
with corresponding results from computer simulations and they provide insights
into the dependence of IQI on the system parameters. We demonstrate that the
effects of IQI differ considerably depending on the considered system as some
cases of single-carrier transmission appear robust to IQI, whereas
multi-carrier systems experiencing IQI at the RX require compensation in order
to achieve a reliable communication link.
