Partially-coherent receivers architectures for QAM communications in the presence of non-constant phase estimation error

In this paper, we present a new partially coherent receiver architecture motivated by optimum detection of quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signals in the presence of time-varying Tikhonov-distributed residual phase estimation error due to phase-locked loop (PLL)-aided phase tracking scheme. Performance is established in terms of bit error rate (BER). In this paper, an approximate performance measure motivated by union bound is presented for the proposed receiver architecture for 8- and 16-QAM constellations. The performance measures are assessed via simulation and analytical means for additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) as well as for Rayleigh and Rician fading channels. The performance measures are shown to follow those of the optimum receiver over a wide range of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), while outperforming a standard coherent receiver operating in the presence of residual phase error by as much as 2 dB.