Precoding for Non-Coherent Detection of Continuous Phase Modulations

Abstract

Non-coherent trellis based receiver (TBR) is an effective method to demodulate noncoherent continuous-phase modulated sequences. However it requires to increase the observation length to reach the performance of classical coherent TBRs. Furthermore it appears that both receivers offers different behaviours when considered in a bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) system using iterative decoding. Indeed, trellis based outer coding schemes performing well in coherent regime generate error floors in non-coherent regime. In this paper, we show that precoding of the continuous phase modulation (CPM) encoder can deal with the latter issue. The optimization of this non-coherent precoding relies on different objectives than the existing precoding methods introduced in the coherent case. The optimization relies on some asymptotic arguments enabling an efficient BICM scheme using iterative decoding. Using the proposed precoding approach enables to remove error floors in the non-coherent regime while enabling transparent use in the coherent case.