Effect of synchronization system errors on the reception noise immunity of amplitude-phase shift keyed signals

Objectives. An urgent task in the context of modern radio and television systems is to improve the quality and quantity of transmitted information. For example, the use of multiple amplitude-phase shift keyed (APSK) signals—16-APSK and 32-APSK—in digital satellite television systems of the Digital Video Broadcasting-Satellite2 (DVB-S2) standard made it possible to transmit 30% more data in the same frequency bands in comparison with the previous DVB-S standard. Such increases in information transmission rates impose more stringent requirements on hardware. An important role in the reception of APSK signals, as well as the signals of other coherent signal processing systems, is played by the stability of synchronization systems. The presence of operational errors can significantly reduce the quality of information reception. The aim of the present work was to analyze the effect of phase and clock synchronization errors on the reception noise immunity of APSK signals with a ring signal constellation structure.

Methods. The study used statistical radio engineering methods informed by optimal signal reception theory.

Results. The effect of phase and clock synchronization errors on the reception noise immunity of APSK signals having a signal constellation ring structure is analyzed. The dependencies of the bit error probability on the magnitude of the phase shift and the clock offset were characterized. The effect of synchronization errors on reception quality were compared with the known results for quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signals.

Conclusions. At an acceptable energy loss of no more than 1 dB, the critical phase error can be considered as 2°-3°, while the critical clock error is 3-4%. A coherent receiver of APSK signals is more sensitive to the phase error of reference oscillations than a similar receiver of QAM signals, whereas clock errors have the same effect on the reception quality of these signals.

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