Decision-Directed Automatic Gain Control for MAPSK Systems

An automatic gain control (AGC) loop is presented for use with -ary amplitude- and phase-shift keying (MAPSK) systems. The gain control amplifier is regulated by an error signal formed by the difference between the estimated amplitude level and the received amplitude level. The AGC performance is thus independent of the short-term average received signal energy. AGC loop analysis and simulation is presented for -ary amplitude-shift keying (MASK) and quadrature amplitude-shift keying (QASK). The AGC is shown to have a negligible degradation on the symbol probability of error for most practical cases. A generalized AGC for an arbitrary MAPSK system is also presented.