SOQPSK with LDPC: Spending Bandwidth to Buy Link Margin

Abstract

Over the past decade, SOQPSK has been widely adopted by the flight test community, and the low density parity check (LDPC) codes are now in widespread use in many applications. This paper defines the waveform and presents the bit error rate (BER) performance of SOQPSK coupled with a rate 2/3 LDPC code. The scheme described here expands the transmission bandwidth by approximately 56% (which is still 22% less than the legacy PCM/FM modulation), for the benefit of improving link margin by over 10 dB at BER = 10⁻⁶.