A Look at Crosstalk in Quadrature-Carrier Modulation Systems

A method is presented for comparing the performance of different quadrature-carrier modulation techniques. It is based on the calculation of the mean-square crosstalk between adjacent digital communications channels. This method was used to determine the crosstalk of a number of constant envelope modulation schemes, including Staggered Quaternary Phase Shift Keying (SQPSK) and Minimum Shift Keying (MSK). The results, as have previous results, show the improved performance of MSK over SQPSK. By utilizing the general equation for mean-square crosstalk as a measure of performance, a search was made for constant envelope modulation methods with reduced crosstalk. A number of methods were found which have better mean-square crosstalk performance than MSK. Finally this paper presents a method for reducing degradation due to crosstalk by using mismatched windows in the standard correlation detector. An example of this technique for detection of MSK signals is analyzed.