Performance of efficient tactical UHF-satcom waveforms: occupied bandwidth, coding gain, spectral efficiency, bit error rate, and adjacent channel interference

The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed description and experimental and simulated performance results for some of the current Raytheon satcom high efficiency tactical waveforms, namely the dual-h quaternary continuous phase modulated (CPM) waveforms and the shaped phase shift keying (SPSK) waveforms. The emphasis is on the performance in terms of adjacent channel interference (ACI), bit error rate (BER), coding gain over conventional waveforms, and the ability of the radio to acquire these waveforms while being subjected to a Doppler frequency of ±1200 Hz. This paper first introduces the mathematical representation of the dual-h quaternary CPM waveform. Then the principle of the data demodulation including carrier and symbol timing acquisition and tracking using the MIL-STD-188-181B-specified preamble is illustrated. Finally, with the use of computer simulations, the spectral envelope and bandwidth efficiency of these efficient waveforms are compared to conventional counterparts.