Performance of Binary PSK Communication Systems

Abstract

The degree of RF coherence which can be established between transmitter and receiver greatly influences the performance of binary communication systems. Practical systems are partially coherent; the main classes are transmitted reference (TR) and single channel (SC). Although SC systems are potentially superior, they are difficult to analyze and have an inherent mark-space ambiguity problem. In this paper, four SC PSK systems have been studied using Monte Carlo simulation on an IBM 360/50 digital computer. Differential data encoding was used. The systems investigated include Decision Feedback (DF), Squaring (SQ), and a variation of SQ called Absolute Value (AB). In addition, a new Maximum Likelihood (ML) SC system, which is optimum in a restricted sense, is derived and simulated. The simulation results show that all of these systems yield comparable average probability of error. This is in contrast with results which have been published previously. Furthermore, the systems can all be shown to reduce to Differential PSK when the number of reference bauds is one. Finally, a method is introduced for studying the effects of various methods of data encoding on SC system operation.