A Digital Demodulator for PSK Signals

This paper describes a digital demodulator for phase-shift-keyed (PSK) signals in which the phase difference between the received signal and a carrier reference is found by measuring digitally the time interval between the zero crossings of the signal and the reference. In the case of coherent detection the reference is locked to one of the possible phases of the signal. The advantage of this demodulator is that bulky low-pass filters and delay lines as well as critical threshold devices can be dispensed with. On the other hand, digital measurement of the phase and the use of a finite-width sampling window lead to degradation of the error performance. This degradation is theoretically analyzed for both coherent and phase-comparison detection. The quantizing error proves to be small enough when the phase difference is coded into a 6-b binary number, and the theoretical results are in good agreement with measurements taken from an experimental phase-comparison demodulator for fourand eight-level PSK signals. The experimental demodulator is also described in the paper.