Engineering topics

Simon, M. K.

Publications and source records attributed to Simon, M. K..

At least 37 records · Page 2

NASA NTRS1989

Fast Correction For Doppler In MDPSK Signals

Detector of multiple differential phase-shift-keyed (MDPSK) signals designed to effect combination of open-loop estimation of frequency and differential detection of digital modulation. Improved design expected to decrease probability of bit errors in situations in which carrier frequency uncertain and signals transmitted in bursts too short to allow closed-loop tracking of carrier frequency - for example, in transmission of digitally-coded voice signals in land-mobile/satellite communications at ultra-high frequencies.

Simon, M. K.↗

NASA NTRS1989

The use of interleaving for reducing radio loss in convolutionally coded systems

The use of interleaving after convolutional coding and deinterleaving before Viterbi decoding is proposed. This effectively reduces radio loss at low-loop Signal to Noise Ratios (SNRs) by several decibels and at high-loop SNRs by a few tenths of a decibel. Performance of the coded system can further be enhanced if the modulation index is optimized for this system. This will correspond to a reduction of bit SNR at a certain bit error rate for the overall system. The introduction of interleaving/deinterleaving into communication systems designed for future deep space missions does not substantially complicate their hardware design or increase their system cost.

Divsalar, D.↗

NASA NTRS1988

Trellis coding techniques for mobile communications

A criterion for designing optimum trellis codes to be used over fading channels is given. A technique is shown for reducing certain multiple trellis codes, optimally designed for the fading channel, to conventional (i.e., multiplicity one) trellis codes. The computational cutoff rate R0 is evaluated for MPSK transmitted over fading channels. Examples of trellis codes optimally designed for the Rayleigh fading channel are given and compared with respect to R0. Two types of modulation/demodulation techniques are considered, namely coherent (using pilot tone-aided carrier recovery) and differentially coherent with Doppler frequency correction. Simulation results are given for end-to-end performance of two trellis-coded systems.

Divsalar, D.↗

NASA NTRS1986

Real-time combiner loss

Telemetry signals from several channels are aligned in time and combined by the Real-Time Combiner (RTC) in order to increase the strength of the total signal. In this article, the impact of the timing jitter in the RTC on the bit/symbol error rate is investigated. Equations are derived for the timing jitter loss associated with the coded and uncoded channels. Included are curves that depict the bit-symbol error rate vs. E sub b/N sub 0 and E sub s/N sub 0 for some typical telemetry conditions. The losses are typically below 0.1 dB.

Simon, M. K.↗

NASA NTRS1986

Multiple Trellis Coded Modulation (MTCM): An MSAT-X report

Conventional trellis coding outputs one channel symbol per trellis branch. The notion of multiple trellis coding is introduced wherein more than one channel symbol per trellis branch is transmitted. It is shown that the combination of multiple trellis coding with M-ary modulation yields a performance gain with symmetric signal set comparable to that previously achieved only with signal constellation asymmetry. The advantage of multiple trellis coding over the conventional trellis coded asymmetric modulation technique is that the potential for code catastrophe associated with the latter has been eliminated with no additional cost in complexity (as measured by the number of states in the trellis diagram).

Divsalar, D.↗

NASA NTRS1986

SNR estimation for the baseband assembly

The expected value and the variance of the Baseband Assembly symbol signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) estimation algorithm are derived. The SNR algorithm treated here is designated as the Split Symbol Moments Estimator (SSME). It consists of averaging the first two moments of the integrated half symbols. The SSME is a biased, consistent estimator. The SNR degradation factor due to the jitter in the subcarrier demodulation and symbol synchronization loops is taken into account. Curves of the expected value of the SNR estimator versus the actual SNR are presented.

Simon, M. K.↗

NASA NTRS1986

Trellis coded modulation for 4800-9600 bps transmission over a fading mobile satellite channel

The combination of trellis coding and multiple phase-shift-keyed (MPSK) signalling with the addition of asymmetry to the signal set is discussed with regard to its suitability as a modulation/coding scheme for the fading mobile satellite channel. For MPSK, introducing nonuniformity (asymmetry) into the spacing between signal points in the constellation buys a further improvement in performance over that achievable with trellis coded symmetric MPSK, all this without increasing average or peak power, or changing the bandwidth constraints imposed on the system. Whereas previous contributions have considered the performance of trellis coded modulation transmitted over an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel, the emphasis in the paper is on the performance of trellis coded MPSK in the fading environment. The results will be obtained by using a combination of analysis and simulation. It will be assumed that the effect of the fading on the phase of the received signal is fully compensated for either by tracking it with some form of phase-locked loop or with pilot tone calibration techniques. Thus, results will reflect only the degradation due to the effect of the fading on the amplitude of the received signal. Also, we shall consider only the case where interleaving/deinterleaving is employed to further combat the fading. This allows for considerable simplification of the analysis and is of great practical interest. Finally, the impact of the availability of channel state information on average bit error probability performance is assessed.

Divsalar, D.↗

NASA NTRS1986

Multiple trellis coded modulation (MTCM)

A new trellis coded modulation technique, referred to as multiple trellis coded modulation wherein more than one channel symbol per trellis branch is transmitted and demonstrated. Simple two state trellis codes for symmetric MPSK and AM modulations, which can achieve 3 dB gain over uncoded modulation at very high signal-to-noise ratios without bandwidth expansion and without reduction in information bit rate have been found. The gain of the new trellis codes with respect to previously reported two state trellis codes is between 1 to 2 dB at very high signal-to-noise ratios, depending on the number of bits per hertz transmitted. These gains are achieved with no additional cost in complexity; while indeed additional computations per branch are needed for the multiple trellis coding scheme. This concept can be extended to higher number of states and other type of modulations; i.e., quadrature amplitude modulation.

Divsalar, D.↗

NASA NTRS1985

On the probability density function of the squared envelope of a sum of random phase vectors

Weber et al. (1980) have found that a generic problem arises in the study of multiuser FHMA/MFSK systems. According to this problem, the presence of the other channel users acts as interference to reception of the desired user's transmission. The present investigation is concerned with a recursive solution in which the recursion parameter is the number of vectors in the sum. A mathematical characterization of such a solution is presented, taking into account the simple two-vector case in which a well-known closed form result is possible. Some numerical results are also discussed. It is pointed out that the considered recursive solution provides a break in the bottleneck associated with the exact computation of the error probability performance of multiuser FHMA/MFSK systems and single access MFSK systems corrupted by multitone jamming.

Simon, M. K.↗

NASA NTRS1985

A new description of combined trellis coding with asymmetric modulation

The combination of rate k/(k+t) trellis codes with digital modulations described by an asymmetric 2 sup k+1-point signal constellation has been recently shown to yield performance improvement over the traditional symmetric constellation combined with the same trellis code. The approach taken is to specify an underlying trellis code and then map the output code symbols into the fixed signal constellation based on a rule called mapping by set partitioning. The latter process is tantamount to assigning signals from the constellation to the trellis code transitions so as to maximize the free Euclidean distance of the code. Recently, a new description of trellis codes has been given that combines the above two steps into one. The ideas introduced are further explored, placing particular emphasis on the optimization of the signal constellation asymmetry. It can be concluded that the trellis-coded amplitude modulation (AM) designs given are very close to being optimum.

Simon, M. K.↗

NASA NTRS1985

DMSK: A practical 2400-bps receiver for the mobile satellite service: An MSAT-X Report

The partical aspects of a 2400-bps differential detection minimum-shift-keying (DMSK) receiver are investigated. Fundamental issues relating to hardware precision, Doppler shift, fading, and frequency offset are examined, and it is concluded that the receiver's implementation at baseband is more advantageous both in cost and simplicity than its IF implementation. The DMSK receiver has been fabricated and tested under simulated mobile satellite environment conditions. The measured receiver performance in the presence of anomalies pertinent to the link is presented in this report. Furthermore, the receiver behavior in a band-limited channel (GMSK) is also investigated. The DMSK receiver performs substantially better than a coherent minimum-shift-keying (MSK) receiver in a heavily fading environment. The DMSK radio is simple and robust, and results in a lower error floor than its coherent counterpart. Moreover, this receiver is suitable for burst-type signals, and its recovery from deep fades is fast.

Davarian, F.↗

NASA NTRS1985

Performance analysis of the DSN baseband assembly (Bba) Real-Time Combiner (RTC)

The operation of the BBA Real Time Combiner (RTC) is discussed and its performance investigated in detail. It is shown that each channel of the RTC can be modelled by a simple block diagram in the z-transform domain from which all pertinent transient and steady state behavioral characteristics can be determined. In particular, the characteristic equation of the tracking loop and its equivalent noise bandwidth are found and used to evaluate the closed loop transient response and steady-state mean squared timing jitter. The impact of the totality of these loop jitter contributions on the combiner output SNR is evaluated and illustrated numerically. These results show that for parameters of interest to various space missions, the RTC is capable of providing significant SNR improvement relative to a single receiving antenna.

Simon, M. K.↗

NASA NTRS1985

Combined trellis coding with asymmetric MPSK modulation: An MSAT-X report

Traditionally symmetric, multiple phase-shift-keyed (MPSK) signal constellations, i.e., those with uniformly spaced signal points around the circle, have been used for both uncoded and coded systems. Although symmetric MPSK signal constellations are optimum for systems with no coding, the same is not necessarily true for coded systems. This appears to show that by designing the signal constellations to be asymmetric, one can, in many instances, obtain a significant performance improvement over the traditional symmetric MPSK constellations combined with trellis coding. The joint design of n/(n + 1) trellis codes and asymmetric 2 sup n + 1 - point MPSK is considered, which has a unity bandwidth expansion relative to uncoded 2 sup n-point symmetric MPSK. The asymptotic performance gains due to coding and asymmetry are evaluated in terms of the minimum free Euclidean distance free of the trellis. A comparison of the maximum value of this performance measure with the minimum distance d sub min of the uncoded system is an indication of the maximum reduction in required E sub b/N sub O that can be achieved for arbitrarily small system bit-error rates. It is to be emphasized that the introduction of asymmetry into the signal set does not effect the bandwidth of power requirements of the system; hence, the above-mentioned improvements in performance come at little or no cost. MPSK signal sets in coded systems appear in the work of Divsalar.

Simon, M. K.↗

NASA NTRS1985

Double symbol error rates for differential detection of narrow-band FM

This paper evaluates the double symbol error rate (average probability of two consecutive symbol errors) in differentially detected narrow-band FM. Numerical results are presented for the special case of MSK with a Gaussian IF receive filter. It is shown that, not unlike similar results previously obtained for the single error probability of such systems, large inaccuracies in predicted performance can occur when intersymbol interference is ignored.

Simon, M. K.↗

NASA NTRS1985

Performance of the Dsa's Subcarrier Demodulation Digital Loop

The subcarrier demodulation digital loop is part of the baseband assembly. The subcarrier demodulator is a fourth-order Costas-type loop corresponding to a type 2 analog loop in terms of steady state response. The expected value and the variance of the error signal are determined as functions of the input SNR. A Nyquist sampling rate of the input signal is assumed. From the integro-difference equations a mixed s/z domain block diagram is obtained. From the loop's transfer function a set of gains for the loop filter is obtained. Also, a set of state equations is presented for future reference. Finally, the noise-equivalent bandwidths are calculated for normalized computation times of 0, 0.25 and 0.5. The subcarrier demodulator analyzed tracks a parabolic phase input with finite steady state error. Since at each update instant the loop gains are adjusted to compensate for the variations in SNR of the input signal, the noise-equivalent bandwidth is maintained constant.

Simon, M. K.↗

NASA NTRS1985

Combined trellis coding with asymmetric modulations

The use of asymmetric signal constellations combined with optimized trellis coding to improve the performance of coded systems without increasing the average or peak power, or changing the bandwidth constraints of a system is discussed. The trellis code, asymmetric signal set, and Viterbi decoder of the system model are examined. The procedures for assigning signals to state transitions of the trellis code are described; the performance of the trellis coding system is evaluated. Examples of AM, QAM, and MPSK modulations with short memory trellis codes are presented.

Divsalar, D.↗

NASA NTRS1985

Bit synchronization of differentially detected MSK and GMSK

The filter-square bit synchronizer has been previously proposed and shown to give near optimum performance for coherent PSK systems. In this paper, the same bit synchronization scheme is analyzed for a differentially detected GMSK system. It is shown that the filter-square bit synchronizer can successfully work in a differential phase detection receiver. By making linear approximations appropriate for high loop signal-to-noise ratio operation (the usual case of interest in tracking), it is demonstrated that the mean-square bit sync jitter of differentially detected GMSK system reveals striking similarities both qualitatively and quantitatively in comparison with that of a coherent PSK system.

Simon, M. K.↗

NASA NTRS1985

Spread spectrum communications. Volume 1, 2 & 3

The design and operation of spread-spectrum (SS) communication systems are examined in an introductory text intended for graduate engineering students and practicing engineers. Chapters are devoted to an overview of SS systems, the historical origins of SS, basic concepts and system models, antijam communication systems, pseudonoise generators, coherent direct-sequence systems, noncoherent frequency-hopped systems, coherent and differentially coherent modulation techniques, pseudonoise acquisition and tracking in direct-sequence receivers, time and frequency synchronization of frequency-hopped receivers, low-probability-of-intercept communication, and multiple-access communication. Graphs, diagrams, and photographs are provided.

Simon, M. K.↗