Interference Immunity Effects in CPSK Systems with Hard-Limiting Transponders

Transmission characteristics are described for M-ary coherent phase-shift keyed (CPSK) systems with N-stage hard-limiting transponders where noise and multiple continuous wave (CW) interference sources are additively combined in each link. A general expression for the probability density function of the composite phase at the final link is derived; the overall error probability is then obtained from this general expression. Comparisons with N-cascaded linear amplifier systems clearly show the noise and interference immunity that result from the use of bandpass hard limiters (BPHLs). The BPHL system´s error probability improvement versus interference sources is shown to be much larger than the improvement versus noise.