RECEIVER DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS FOR COMMUNICATION CHANNELS WITH CARRIER PHASE NOISE AND FADING

Abstract

Brownian motion carrier phase noise is common in two-dimensional carrier modulations. Together with channel additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN), it leads to a phase reference error (PRE) at the receiver due to imperfect phase estimation. The PRE is approximately Gaussian-distributed. By viewing the channel AWGN as an equivalent additive, observation phase noise (AOPN), we arrive at a unified received signal model in amplitude-phase form where the received phase incorporates the PRE and the AOPN. We use the received amplitude and phase information to derive the maximum-likelihood (ML) detector. For high signal-to-noise ratio or high PRE variance, the ML detector reduces to an annular-sector detector which performs better than the conventional minimum Euclidean distance detector. The amplitude-phase form facilitates error performance analysis and constellation optimization in phase noise. We derive tight bounds and invertible average error probability expressions over composite fading channels. The results find applications in wireless and optical communications.