Optimal Detection of Hard-Limited Data Signals in Different Noise Environments

A number of digital techniques for detecting binary antipodal signals are based on examining the polarities of the received signal samples and ignoring their amplitudes. The structure of the optimum detector for the hard-limited samples is derived, and its performance is compared to those of some commonly used schemes in impulsive as well as Gaussian noise environments. The optimum receiver for
M
-ary signaling based on received signal samples quantized to an arbitrary number of levels is obtained and compared to other detectors.