A high-performance reduced-complexity GMSK demodulator

A four-state adaptive maximum-likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) Gaussian minimum-shift keying (GMSK) demodulator for modulation (BT=0.3) on AWGN channels is analyzed and simulated. This demodulator uses the linear representation of GMSK signals and achieves near-optimum BER performance. The channel-impulse response used in the MLSE demodulator is initialized to the highest energy component in the linear representation, and then adapted in a decision-directed mode to offset any performance losses incurred by initially ignoring other lower energy (and time-varying) components in the linear representation. The number of MLSE states is reduced to two, at about 0.1-dB performance loss, by implementing a whitening matched filter which concentrates most of the GMSK pulse energy in its two leading samples.