OPTIMIZED LOW BIT RATE PCM/FM TELEMETRY WITH WIDE IF BANDWIDTHS

Abstract

This paper will present the results of some experiments with non-coherent, single symbol detection of pulse code modulation (PCM)/frequency modulation (FM) where the receiver intermediate frequency (IF) bandwidth is much wider than the bit rate. The experiments involved varying the peak deviation and measuring the bit error probability (BEP) at various signal energy per bit to noise power spectral density ratios (E(b)/N(o)). The experiments showed that the optimum peak-to-peak deviation was about 0.7 to 0.8 times the –3 dB IF bandwidth and that the E(b)/N(o) required for a given BEP increased as the ratio of IF bandwidth to bit rate increased. Further, bi-phase-level/FM performed slightly better than non-return-to-zero-level (NRZ-L)/FM with an ac coupled RF signal generator and IF bandwidths much wider than the bit rate.