A wide dynamic-range phase detector for advanced communication systems application

The author proposes a novel phase sensitive detector with a programmable sensitivity and phase detection range for signal processing/detection in the phase domain. To generate a phase discrimination response with a specified sensitivity and detection range, a mathematical procedure is developed to represent the response in terms of a truncated trigonometric power-series of cos theta and sin theta with theta being the phase deviation of an input modulated signal. Based on mathematical results, an algorithm is developed to synthesize the detector by electronically mechanizing each power-series term using an analog multiplication, programmable coefficient scaling, and transversal summing. Employing the algorithm, the idea of a wide range linear quasi 2 pi -radian phase detector for a M-ary phase shift keying (PSK)/quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) and phase locked loop (PLL) system application is presented. Detector performance in the presence of additive noise has been investigated to show that an input signal-to-noise power ratio higher than 10 dB will assure satisfactory system operation.