FQPSK VERSUS PCM/FM FOR AERONAUTICAL TELEMETRY APPLICATIONS; SPECTRAL OCCUPANCY AND BIT ERROR PROBABILITY COMPARISONS

Abstract

The aeronautical telemetry community is investigating alternative modulation methods to the commonly used non-return-to-zero (NRZ) pulse code modulation (PCM)/frequency modulation (FM). This paper outlines the important characteristics being investigated. Measured data comparing the spectral occupancy and bit error probability (BEP) performance of PCM/FM with that of a prototype constant envelope Feher’s quadrature phase shift keying (FQPSK) modulator and demodulator will also be presented. Measured results in several radio frequency bands demonstrate that the 99.99% and -60 dBc bandwidths of filtered FQPSK are only approximately one-half of the corresponding bandwidths of optimized PCM/FM even when the signal is non-linearly amplified. The signal energy per bit to noise power spectral density (E /N ) required for a BEP of 1×10 b 0 -5 for non-optimized FQPSK was approximately 12 dB which is approximately the same as limiter discriminator detected PCM/FM.