The Design of a Low Data Rate MFSK Communication System

Low data rate communications are of considerable interest for applications in which the received signal-to-noise ratio is very low. At data rates below the neighborhood of 5 bit/s, coherent communication techniques become inefficient, and noncoherent techniques such as
m
-ary frequency shift keying (MFSK) become attractive. In this paper, the design of an MFSK low data rate communication system is discussed. The problems of synchronization in time and frequency are analyzed, and experimental results of successful laboratory tests of the system are presented.