Asymptotic Performance of Three Hard-Limiting Noncoherent Correlator-Envelope Detectors

Abstract

Three suboptimal correlator-envelope detectors are analyzed for the noncoherent detection of one of M signals. Suboptimality is introduced in each case by hard limiters which serve the dual purpose of providing automatic gain control (AGC) and simplifying mechanization. The first two, bandpass limiter preceding the detector and hard limiter in each channel, are well known and included for comparison. The third which is like the second, but with the additional feature of comparison weighting of the limiter outputs, is shown to exhibit an asymptotic performance within 0.25 dB of the bandpass limiter.