Simple coherent receivers for partial response continuous phase modulation

By using a pulse-amplitude-modulation representation of binary continuous-phase-modulation signals, the authors develops a novel optimum Viterbi sequence detector and a near-optimum Viterbi receiver with low complexity. For modulation index 0.5, where a linear receiver can be used, a minimum-mean-squared-error linear receiver filter is derived. The performance of all of these is analyzed, using the Gaussian minimum-shift-keying signal (GMSK) for illustration. It is shown that a GMSK receiver consisting of two matched filters and a four-state Viterbi algorithm performs with less than 0.24-dB degradation compared with the optimal receiver. The linear receiver is optimum for all values of E _b/N₀ (bit-energy-to-noise one-sided spectral density ratio). A design method for its filter is given. The filter is equivalent to a cascade of a matched filter and a Wiener filter estimator. Both upper and lower bounds for the bit-error probability are calculated. Simulation results which confirm the analysis are given