Continuous Phase Modulation--Part I: Full Response Signaling

The continuous phase modulation (CPM) signaling scheme has gained interest in recent years because of its attractive spectral properties. Data symbol pulse shaping has previously been studied with regard to spectra, for binary data and modulation index 0.5. In this paper these results have been extended to the -ary case, where the pulse shaping is over a one symbol interval, the so-called full response systems. Results are given for modulation indexes of practical interest, concerning both performance and spectrum. Comparisons are made with minimum shift keying (MSK) and systems have been found which are significantly better in for a large signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) without expanded bandwidth. Schemes with the same bit error probability as MSK but with considerably smaller bandwidth have also been found. Significant improvement in both power and bandwidth are obtained by increasing the number of levels from 2 to 4.