On M-ary DPSK transmission over terrestrial and satellite channels

The error rate performance of M-ary DPSK systems is investigated in the presence of phase change offset, noise correlation, and power imbalance. Both the terrestrial channel and the hard-limiting satellite repeater channel are considered. In the satellite repeater case, the noise correlations and power imbalances are assumed to be present on both the up- and downlinks. The emphasis is on exact results, or asymptotic approximations obtained therefrom, as opposed to error rate bounds. Most of the results are given in terms of integrals readily evaluated by quadrature. Performance curves showing the effects of the various impairments are presented. Some specific conclusions which follow from the results are that: (1) the phase change offset is relatively unimportant for M equal to or greater than 4, (2) the M-ary case is less sensitive to imbalance than is the binary case, and (3) the satellite link performance depends strongly upon the quality of the uplink.