An investigation of coding for non-coherently demodulated binary FSK signals

Data communications are susceptible to radio frequency interference (RFI) and other noise that may degrade the quality of reception. To minimize these detrimental effects caused by underlying, harsh environments, a radio must optimize its forward error correction (FEC) schemes with a constraint on system complexity to ensure accurate reception of data at an affordable cost. Because this is a critical and important system design issue, the paper reports an investigation of coding for a common demodulation scheme, non-coherently demodulated binary FSK signals. In the study, tradeoffs between different coding schemes are made in conjunction with the signal design and associated communication protocols. Results of the analysis are demonstrated to evaluate and compare performance attainable with various coding schemes