Digital frequency estimation in burst mode QPSK transmission

In burst digital transmission using PSK (phase shift keying) modulation with coherent detection, the recovery of the carrier reference phase and the symbol clock is a key aspect. If all users have a common clock synchronization, symbol timing needs not to be recovered in each burst. A digital processor for carrier recovery without preambles, in the presence of frequency offset, is considered. As an example, a 2 Mb/s QPSK transmission system is considered in which E/sub b//N/sub o/=10 dB, and the burst and estimation interval length L=15. Using the algorithm described and averaging eight successive estimated frequency offsets, in order to eliminate anomalous errors, the BER (bit error rate) degradation is equal to 0.14 dB when Delta f=20 kHz.>