Recursive Phase Estimation for Asymmetric M-PSK TCM Schemes in Fading Channels

In this paper, we investigate the effect of the carrier phase offset on the performance of asymmetric M-ary shift keying (M-PSK) trellis coded modulation (TCM) over Rayleigh flat fading channel. For the purpose of comparison, the symmetric case is also discussed. A reliable low complexity non-data-aided (NDA) carrier phase recovery algorithm suited for general TCM schemes is designed here. We propose a recursive phase synchronization technique that dynamically tracks the fading channel variations and also exhibits an absolute minimum at the carrier phase offset. Simulation results show the efficiency of the resulting blind carrier phase synchronizer for symmetric and asymmetric 8-PSK TCM against blind phase estimators described in the literature. Also, it has negligible Bit Error Rate (BER) performance degradation as compared to the coherent system.