Joint data detection and channel estimation for coded and uncoded continuous phase modulation signals

Abstract

The performance of decision‐directed approach for joint data detection and channel estimation for continuous phase modulation (CPM) signal is limited because of an inevitable decision delay, which results in a trade‐off between data detection and channel estimation. In this paper, a novel hard output demodulation that solves the conflict requirement on the decision delay by predicting the channel coefficients over a given observation interval through a Kalman filter is proposed for uncoded CPM signal. The prediction guarantees high channel tracking capability and meanwhile maintains the accuracy of data detection. The proposed hard output demodulator is further extended to design a soft‐input soft‐output demodulator for serially concatenated CPM signal, which allows iterative processing. The convergence behavior of the proposed iterative receiver is presented. Simulation results show that the proposed demodulators provide improved performance in terms of bit error rate over some existing algorithms.