Fractional-bit differential detection of MSK: A scheme to avoid outages due to frequency-selective fading

A new scheme of fractional-bit differential detection of minimum shift keying (MSK) is proposed. This technique is aimed at reducing timing fluctuation of eye patterns, which is found to be a cause of abnormally long burst errors in a frequency-selective fading channel. We have confirmed in a detailed laboratory experiment that such long-burst errors can be eliminated by employing a differential delay shorter than one-bit interval, thereby yielding remarkable improvement in the measured average bit error rates. The result, in a way, highlights the influence of eye-pattern timing fluctuation on an actual digital mobile radio system.