Single Differential Modulation and Detection for MPSK in the Presence of Unknown Frequency Offset

We consider improving the performance of communications over unknown channels with unknown frequency offsets. In lieu of the commonly suggested double differential (DD) modulation/detection, we consider single differential (SD) modulation/detection. We propose an approach that first estimates and compensates for the frequency offset and then detects using an existing multiple symbol detector for SD modulation. We introduce a simple data-symbol-independent frequency offset estimation method, which is reasonably accurate when using a data block larger than the one used for detection. Simulation results show that the SD modulation/detection approach proposed herein can significantly outperform the DD modulation/detection schemes.