Comparison of Phase Tracking Schemes for PSK

Abstract

Based on straightforward approximations to evaluate the error rate with phase jitter in the reconstituted carrier and phase slips in the tracking loop, comparison is made of three schemes for biphase and quadriphase data transmission: 1. Track phase on carrier component, 2. Track on suppressed carrier - use differentially encoded PSK, 3. Track on suppressed carrier - retain a carrier component to resolve the inherent ambiguity. For operation at relatively high P(E), as with error correction, schemes 1 and 3 both avoid the inherent degradation of differential encoding; however, both require a relatively narrow band phase tracking loop. Scheme 3, suppressed carrier tracking with ambiguity resolution, achieves the minimum E(b)/N(o) degradation at high P(E) when the loop bandwidth parameter is held fixed by system requirements.