Sub-optimal detection of digital PPM employing PIN-BJT receivers

Digital PPM has been shown to be a promising modulation format in that it is a means of exchanging excess channel bandwidth for improved receiver sensitivity. The optimum pre-detection filter is a matched filter in cascade with a proportional-derivative-delay pulse shaping network. This is quite a complicated structure and is fairly difficult to implement. This paper examines the penalty incurred in receiver sensitivity when sub-optimum filtering is used. It is shown that receiver sensitivity can be significantly simplified without incurring enormous penalties in receiver sensitivity