New phase and frequency detectors for carrier recovery in PSK and QAM systems

Phase and frequency detectors (PFDs) are presented that considerably extend the acquisition range of carrier-recovery loops in digital communication systems. Based on a simple modification of conventional phase detectors (PDs), the proposed detectors are applicable to a large variety of modulation schemes, including the popular PSK and QAM signal formats. Their application to QPSK and 16- and 64-QAM is extensively discussed, and simulated frequency-detector (FD) characteristics, as well as acquisition behavior of several PFDs, are reported for QPSK and 16 QAM. The results of an experimental evaluation using a 16-QAM laboratory modem are also reported which show that the detectors increase the acquisition range achievable by conventional PDs by more than one order of magnitude. In PSK, the improved acquisition performance is obtained with no penalty in steady-state phase jitter. In combined amplitude- and phase-shift keying, it generally leads to increased jitter, but this is easily avoided by incorporating a lock indicator and switching back to the original PD after lock is acquired