Continuous Phase Modulation of F-QPSK-B Signals

A continuous phase modulation (CPM) implementation alternative of a recently standardized class of Feher-patented quadrature phase-shift keying (F-QPSK-B) modulation is proposed. Based on the fact that the F-QPSK-B signal has a quasi-constant envelope and continuous phase characteristics, it is shown that it can indeed be generated by the CPM scheme. For example, an F-QPSK-B signal can be fully generated using an existing FM-based transmitter with a modulation index of 0.5. Furthermore, a premodulation filter and an alternating change monitor differential encoder for the continuous-phase-modulated F-QPSK-B signal to be fully compatible with the I/Q modulated F-QPSK-B signal are proposed, allowing direct symbol-by-symbol coherent detection without the use of any special decoding schemes inherent in all CPM schemes. It is shown that the power spectral density and eye diagram of the continuous-phase-modulated F-QPSK-B signal are practically the same as those of the I/Q modulated F-QPSK-B signal. By utilizing CPM characteristics, an optimum maximum-likelihood (ML) coherent receiver for the F-QPSK-B signal is proposed. It is shown that the bit-error-rate performances of the optimum ML coherent detection, symbol-by-symbol coherent detection, and noncoherent detection of the continuous-phase-modulated F-QPSK-B signal are almost the same as those of the I/Q modulated F-QPSK-B signal.