A digital coherent receiver suitable for land-mobile satellitecommunications

Describes an advanced coherent demodulation technique suitable for land-mobile satellite communications. The proposed technique features a combined narrow/wide band dual open loop (DOL) carrier phase estimator, which effectively enables the coherent receiver to track fast phase fluctuations caused by fading, without degradation in phase slip characteristics. Additionally, an open loop phase estimator has inherent quick recovery performance. Its bit error rate (BER) performance is shown to be superior to that for existing detection schemes, achieving a 10^-2 BER at 6.3 dB E_b/N₀ (0.9 dB greater than the theoretical E_b/N₀ condition for perfect carrier phase tracking) for QPSK over a Rician fading channel with the 10 dB Rician factor and the 1/16 baud rate fading pitch. The paper also describes a quick bit timing recovery scheme, with interpolation, featuring an open loop structure. Further, it presents an experimental digital modem developed through the use of digital signal processors     

Digital outside-broadcasting-link using OFDM modulation scheme

A study on digital broadcasting systems has been conducted for the multimedia era. Regarding program production, a digital outside-broadcasting-link (OBL), in particular, from mobile source is required to gather digital video and audio sources in severe multipath environments. The orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation scheme is robust under multipath fading conditions. A digital OFDM modem for OBL in the 800 MHz band has been developed to enable stable transmission of digital sources from moving vehicles. In the experimental OFDM-OBL, the compressed digital video and audio data are distributed to 572 carriers in the 9 MHz bandwidth, using differential quadrature phase shift keying (DQPSK) modulation for each carrier. In computer simulation and indoor/outdoor experiments, it is confirmed that digital OFDM-OBL can stably transmit signals, even under severe multipath fading conditions, while pictures transmitted with conventional FM-OBL are seriously degraded. This paper describes the features of the OFDM modem for the digital OBL which transmits program sources from moving vehicles, and also discusses aspects of gathering digital program sources     

A Higher Data-Rate T-DMB System Based on a Hierarchical A-DPSK Modulation

Hierarchical modulation can be effectively used to enhance terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting (T-DMB) or digital audio broadcasting (DAB) systems in response to both the demand for higher data-rate and the need to be backward compatible with legacy receivers. QAM-type modulations are well-liked for hierarchical transmission but require coherent detection based on pilot symbol aided channel estimation. In the T-DMB or the DAB system using DQPSK modulation, however, any available pilot symbols except for the phase reference symbol do not exist. Differential amplitude phase shift keying (DAPSK) modulation is easily applied to the T-DMB system for a hierarchical modulation but may be susceptible to fast fading. As a good candidate for a hierarchical modulation of T-DMB to solve the above problems, we propose an amplitude differential phase shift keying (A-DPSK) modulation which is robust to fast fading by estimating only amplitude coefficients of the channel transfer function with the use of amplitude pilots. To raise the accuracy of channel estimation, we arrange the amplitude pilots in a come-type and introduce a noise-reduction scheme of averaging estimated channel coefficients. Simulation results show that the proposed A-DPSK provides a good choice for achieving a higher data-rate over other possible modulation schemes for advanced T-DMB or DAB systems.      

Digital portable transceiver using GMSK modem and ADM codec

Digital mobile radio transmission techniques and integrated circuit devices have been developed for application to a digital portable transceiver utilizing narrow-band GMSK modulation and ADM voice coding. Design and performance of a quadrature type GMSK modulator and a single-chip coherent demodulator as the GMSK modem are described. To overcome slow fading, encountered in portable applications, switching diversity using a jitter detection type sensor is proposed and shown to be effective. An experimental portable transceiver, developed to demonstrate hardware feasibility, is also described.     

An All Digital Implementation of Constant Envelope: Bandwidth Efficient GMSK Modem using Advanced Digital Signal Processing Techniques

Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK) has been the most common modulation format belonging to the class of partial response Continuous Phase Modulation (CPM) scheme. It is primarily adopted in the GSM standards (B=0.3) for land mobile radio communication systems because of its high bandwidth efficiency and constant envelope modulation characteristics. The focus of this paper is the design of the demodulator wherein we demonstrate an all digital implementation of sub-optimal synchronization techniques for a GMSK modem based on two Laurent Amplitude modulation pulse (AMP) streams approximation representing the matched filter. In this all digital implementation, we perform a joint estimation of the symbol timing and carrier offset wherein the symbol timing is performed using interpolation techniques.     

Improved modulation techniques for wireless communications: raisedcosine filtered FQPSK-FQPSK(RC)

An improved spectrally efficient modem scheme is proposed for wireless communications. This new scheme is based on nonlinear base band processor, with additional filtering to reduced the spectral spreading. Its spectral efficiency is improved up to 20%, comparing with GMSK. Additional filtering is a square root of raised cosine filter with a varying between 0.2 and 0.5. The performance of this technique has been evaluated in both AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels. This new spectral efficient modem is as robust as GMSK in interference limited fading environment and increases the capacity 20%     

A coded 16 QAM scheme for fast fading mobile radio channels

An adaptive Viterbi algorithm, derived from a dynamic estimate of the fading channel is used for the decoding of a convolutional coded 16 QAM system in a mobile environment. The estimates are obtained by a sequence of known pilot symbols embedded in the data stream, and perform compensation for Rayleigh fading. The likelihood criterion in the Viterbi decoder is also modified by these channel estimates through a metric weighting function. We demonstrate through computer simulations, that our new technique achieves a BER improvement of 7-10 dB at P_e =10^-3 in a fast flat Rayleigh fading environment compared to an uncoded system. The BER performance of our new technique in a co-channel interference (CCI) controlled environment is also studied, and the results show that it may achieve a 40% to 85% improvement in capacity over the standard modem scheme for the new US digital cellular system, π/4-QPSK     

Digital Portable Transceiver Using GMSK Modem and ADM Codec

Digital mobile radio transmission techniques and integrated circuit devices have been developed for application to a digital portable transceiver utilizing narrow-band GMSK modulation and ADM voice coding. Design and performance of a quadrature type GMSK modulator and a single-chip coherent demodulator as the GMSK modem are described. To overcome slow fading, encountered in portable applications, switching diversity using a jitter detection type sensor is Proposed and shown to be effective. An experimental Portable transceiver, developed to demonstrate hardware feasibility, is also described.     

Performance of 16 kbit/s GMSK transmission with postdetection selection diversity in land mobile radio

Through laboratory simulation tests and field experiments in the Tokyo metropolitan area, 16 kbit/s Gaussian filtered minimum shift keying (GMSK) transmission performance has been experimentally clarified in the 920 MHz land mobile radio environment. The experimental results agree closely with theory, and they show that fast multipath fading severely degrades average bit error rate (BER) performance in GMSK transmission. However, a space diversity reception technique using a postdetection selection combining scheme is able to efficiently mitigate the fast multipath fading.     

Performance of 16 kbit/s GMSK Transmission with Postdetection Selection Diversity in Land Mobile Radio

Through laboratory simulation tests and field experiments in the Tokyo metropolitan area, 16 kbit/s Gaussian filtered minimum shift keying (GMSK) transmission performance has been experimentally clarified in the 920 MHz land mobile radio environment. The experimental results agree closely with theory, and they show that fast multipath fading severely degrades average bit error rate (BER) performance in GMSK transmission. However, a space diversity reception technique using a postdetection selection combining scheme is able to efficiently mitigate the fast multipath fading.     

An improved π/4-QPSK with nonredundant error correction forsatellite mobile broadcasting

An improved π/4-quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) receiver that incorporates a simple nonredundant error correction (NEC) structure is proposed for satellite and land-mobile digital broadcasting. The bit-error rate (BER) performance of the π/4-QPSK with NEC is analyzed and evaluated in a fast Rician fading and additive white Gaussian noise. (AWGN) environment using computer simulation. It is demonstrated that with simple electronics the performance of a noncoherently detected π/4-QPSK signal in both AWGN and fast Rician fading can be improved. When the K-factor (a ratio of average power of multipath signal to direct path power) of the Rician channel decreases, the improvement increases. An improvement of 1.2 dB could be obtained at a BER of 10^-4 in the AWGN channel. This performance gain is achieved without requiring any signal redundancy and additional bandwidth. Three types of noncoherent detection schemes of π/4QPSK with NEC structure, such as intermediate frequency band differential detection, baseband differential detection, and FM discriminator, are discussed. It is concluded that the π/4-QPSK with NEC is an attractive scheme for power-limited satellite land-mobile broadcasting systems     

All-digital reverse modulation architecture based carrier recoveryimplementation for GMSK and compatible FQPSK

A carrier recovery circuit implementation with an all-digital reverse modulation approach for coherent detection in the GSM/GMSK system as well as the GMSK compatible improved efficiency cross-correlated FQPSK system is presented. The proposed carrier recovery implementation utilizes all-digital reverse modulation circuit in a feedback loop to remove the modulated signal from the received intermediate frequency (IF) signal and to estimate the phase error of this carrier signal using a phase-locked loop (PLL). The digital reverse modulation approach avoids the multipliers required in an analog reverse modulation design, so that it can be implemented in a single chip FPGA. Hardware implementation of the coherent detection demonstrates that cross-correlated FQPSK is completely compatible with GMSK in the system performance and the receiver structure for GSM. Experimental performance evaluations show that the proposed carrier recovery circuit provides a Bit Error Rate (BER) performance within 0.3 dB in a non-linearly amplified channel corrupted by additive white Gaussian noise (AWCN) as compared with the simulated performance of the GSM/GMSK system     

Mobile digital communications via tone calibration

A new digital signaling technique that is particularly suited for channels impaired by multipath fading is presented. The proposed modulation scheme employs a continuous-wave (CW) tone to calibrate the mobile channel against the multipath-induced phase uncertainties. This technique is applicable to quaternary phase shift keying as well as to more complicated signal constellations such as M-ary phase shift keyed schemes. The advantages of tone calibration are: 1) robustness of the receiver and 2) elimination of the link dependent error floor. Furthermore, since the CW tone can also be used for coherent signal demodulation, carrier phase acquisition can be achieved within a bit time. This property is particularly attractive when a burst of data with a short burst length has to be detected. This radio technique is useful for both the terrestrial mobile and the newer satellite-aided mobile communication (SAMC) services.     

Pilot-symbol aided coherent M-ary PSK in frequency-selective fastRayleigh fading channels

Pilot-symbol aided coherent M-ary PSK modems in digital cellular mobile radio systems are analyzed theoretically. The error-floors caused by the Doppler spread in a fast fading channel are removed in both flat and selective fading channels. However, the error-floors caused by the delay spread are lower-bounded by those that exist in the ideal coherent detection. The systems are modeled as frequency-selective fast Rayleigh fading channels, corrupted by co-channel interference (CCI) and additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). In the proposed scheme, pilot symbols are inserted periodically to monitor the channel characteristics. The fading processes experienced by the pilot symbols are used to estimate those suffered by the data symbols using interpolation or filtering. The estimated fade characteristics are used to compensate the random phase variation caused by the Doppler spread, so that the signals can be demodulated coherently. The theoretical performances of the fade compensated coherent modems are evaluated. The results show that the fade compensated coherent demodulation with the least redundancy achieves the same performance as the ideal differential detection in a fading channel. The performance approaches that of the ideal coherent demodulation as more redundancy is allowed. The pilot-symbol-insertion (PSI) scheme is also applicable to M-ary QAM modems and Rician channels. The residual frequency offset can also be compensated by the PSI technique     

A spectrally efficient constant envelope modulation technique forPCS and mobile communications

A newly developed constant envelope FQPSK modem/radio architecture, which employs a modified double-jump (DJ) filter in the cross-correlated FQPSK system, is proposed for personal communications systems (PCS) and mobile radio applications. Power efficiency, spectrum efficiency, BER, and system capacity of this system are investigated in a non-linear amplified (NLA) Rayleigh fading environment. We demonstrate that with the simplest threshold detectors (binary robust eye diagrams in I and Q channels), this system is 4-7 dB more power efficient than the US digital cellular and Japanese Handyphone standard π/4-QPSK, 50%-100% more spectrally efficient than the European standard GMSK, and it almost double the capacity of GMSK     

A simple modulation scheme for error performance improvement oflow-deviation digital FM

The paper proposes a simple digital modulation scheme named LF (lowpass filtered)-π/2 TFSK. Since it is essentially a constant envelope modulation scheme, it can be applied to severely band-limited channels such as land mobile and satellite mobile radio channels. Its error performance is superior to that of MSK modulation in band-limited channels at the cost of a slightly wider bandwidth (approximately 1.06 times) than GMSK. The required E_b/N₀ with 2-bit differential detection at the error rate of 10^-5 is 2.3 dB smaller than that of GMSK in an additive Gaussian channel and 3 dB smaller at the average error rate of 10^-4 in a fast Rayleigh fading channel. The above result, obtained by an exact error rate analysis, was confirmed by laboratory experiments at a frequency of 880 MHz. The spectral characteristics were analyzed through computer simulations and the results were found to agree with those obtained from a hardware implementation     

Multiple differential detection of continuous phase modulationsignals

A sequence estimation algorithm for the differential detection of the continuous phase modulation (CPM) signals, yielding significant gains in BER performance and with considerable resistivity to fading, is introduced. These advantages, along with the reduced hardware complexity, low cost, and fast synchronization which characterize the differential detector, make the proposed receiver useful for land mobile radio and mobile-satellite communications. The new receiver is based on multiple differential detection. The multiple differential detection strategy provides the decoder with more information regarding the transmitted data and applies a noise decorrelation process on the received signal, useful to the sequence estimation. The algorithm is derived in a general form, and can be applied on any CPM scheme, with any degree of complexity. The authors have evaluated the receiver for two of the most popular CPM schemes, the tamed frequency modulation (TFM) and Gaussian minimum-shift keying (GMSK) (with B₁ T=0.25), in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and Rician fading. The BER performance evaluation results indicated significant gains and considerable reduction of error floors. In AWGN improvements close to 9 dB have been verified     

A new carrier recovery circuit for land mobile satellitecommunication

A DCF (dual carrier filter) reverse-modulation-type carrier recovery circuit is proposed to achieve a low carrier skipping rate and satisfactory phase tracking performance for coherent detection of PSK (phase shift keying) signals in fast Rician fading channels. The proposed scheme employs both narrow and wide bandwidth carrier filters simultaneously for the reverse-modulation-type carrier recovery circuit. It is clarified by computer simulation that the Pe performance of a QPSK (quadriphase shift keying) modem employing the proposed scheme shows an improvement of 1.5 dB in required E_s/N_O at Pe=10⁴ (after Viterbi decoding (R=7/8, K=7), C/M (direct-to-multipath signal power ratio)=10 dB, interleaving size=64×64), compared with conventional coherent detection employing the reverse modulation tank-limiter scheme or the Costas loop scheme     

A new FQPSK modem/radio architecture for PCS and mobile satellitecommunications

A newly developed constant envelope FQPSK modem/radio architecture, which employs a modified double-jump (DJ) filter in the cross-correlated FQPSK system, is proposed for personal communications systems (PCS) and mobile satellite applications. The power efficiency and spectrum efficiency of this system are investigated in a nonlinear amplified (NLA) environment. The bit error rate (BER) performance is evaluated in a noisy Rayleigh fading channel. We demonstrate that with the simplest threshold detectors (binary robust eye diagrams in I and Q channels), this system is 4-7 dB more power efficient than the US digital cellular and Japanese Handyphone standard π/4-QPSK (50%-100% more spectrally efficient than the recently adopted wireless local area network (LAN) standard GFSK and the European standard GMSK). The results indicate that the proposed DJ filtered FQPSK is a power and spectrally efficient modem/radio technique. By selecting different system parameters, this system can be optimized for a wide range of applications in PCS and mobile satellite communications     

A fully digital noncoherent and coherent GMSK receiver architecturewith joint symbol timing error and frequency offset estimation

We propose a fully digital noncoherent and coherent Gaussian minimum shift keying (GMSK) receiver architecture with joint frequency offset compensation and symbol timing recovery. Carrier phase offset can be estimated if the coherent demodulation mode is adopted. The converted base-band complex signal is first frequency discriminated and then passed through a digital filter which performs a fast Fourier transform (FFT). The frequency offset can be estimated from the DC component of the FFT, and the symbol timing error can be estimated from the phase angle of the FFT at a specified frequency which is equal to an integral multiple of half the bit rate. These two estimated parameters are then used for frequency offset compensation and symbol timing recovery during a preamble period. Coarse carrier phase can be estimated by averaging sampled in-phase and quadrature-phase signals and finding its phase angle within the preamble period after carrier frequency offset is estimated and compensated. The bit error rate (BER) performance of this GMSK receiver architecture is assessed for an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel by computer simulation