The performance of trellis coded multilevel DPSK on a fading mobile satellite channel

The performance of a trellis-coded multilevel differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) modulation over a mobile satellite channel characterized by additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and slow Rician fading is presented. Both the optimum and Gaussian (suboptimum) decoding metrics are considered, with performance results given only for the latter. Analytical results (upper bounds on bit error rate) are obtained wherever possible and illustrated by several numerical examples. Also given are simulation results which are more indicative of the exact system performance. Comparisons with results previously obtained for coherent detection of the same coded modulations are presented.<>