Digital Communication

Chapter 4

Optimum Receiver for Digitally Modulated Signal

Introduction

•Let a digital communication system transmits digital information using M-ary signaling
scheme.

•It divides the bit stream in to k-bits symbols resulting 2 k = M possible symbols.

•The symbols are converted to corresponding signals from set and transmitted at each
signaling interval T.

•The received signal in that interval:

•Here, : Sample function of AWGN process with power spectral density watt/Hz
Optimum receiver

The optimum receiver aims to minimize the probability of making an

error.

The receiver has two sub blocks:

1. Signal Demodulator:

2. Detector:
1. Signal Demodulator:
• It converts the received signal in an N-dimensional vector
in each signaling interval.
N is the dimension of transmit signal space.

• is the coefficient corresponding to i-th basis function.

2. Detector:
• In each signaling interval, it decides which of the M possible signal waveform
was transmitted based on the observation of received signal vector .
Signal Demodulator
Correlation type demodulator

Matched filter type demodulator

Correlation type demodulator

It multiplies the carrier (orthonormal basis function) to the received

signal followed by an integrator (LPF) and sampled at every signaling
interval.
• For N dimensional signal demodulation, signal is passed through parallel bank
of N correlators.

• The k-th branch of correlator multiplies k-th basis function and passes the
output through integrator.

• The integrator output is sampled at every sampling interval resulting

• Mathematically,

Here,

= component of noise along k-th basis function

• The received signal can be synthesized as:

 Matched Filter Type Demodulator
•The received signal passes through a parallel bank of N linear filters.

•Impulse response of the filter in k-th branch is given by:

Here : Dimension of the signal space

: k-th basis function

• k-th filter output:

• If the outputs are sampled at ,

• It is exactly same as set of values obtained from N correlator.

• For a signal confined to time interval , its matched filter has impulse
response is .
 Optimum Detector
 The output of the demodulator produces a vector which is sum of transmitted and
noise vector
 The vector is represented as a signal point on an N-dimensional signal space.
 The vector is an N-dimensional random vector with each component follows an
independent Gaussian (Normal) distribution with zero mean and variance.
 Noise vector has a spherical symmetry in N-dimensional space.
 So, when symbol is transmitted, the received signal vector is represented by a spherical
cloud centered at .
 The value of determines the density of the noise cloud.
Task of Optimum detector: To make decision on transmitted signal from
observation on in each interval with least probability of error.
Decision Criterion
•Decision criterion is formed based on computation of posterior probability defined by
the probability of transmission of given is observed.

i.e.

•The criterion selects the signal having maximum posterior probability among set of
probabilities .

•The estimate of the transmitted signal:

•This decision criterion is called as maximum a posterior (MAP) criterion.

• Special Case: All M symbols are
equiprobable,

i.e.

• In such condition, the decision criterion

selects the signal having minimum Euclidian
distance from the observation point.

• This decision criterion is called as maximum

likelihood (ML) criterion.
Probability of error for signal detection in presence of
AWGN
•Probability of error is the probability that the detector makes a wrong decision.

•For binary signal, the detector detects when is transmitted or vice versa.

•Bit error rate (BER) is same as probability of error given by number of bit error occurred
by the total number of bits sent.
Case 1: Binary antipodal signal represented with single-dimensional
vector space
and
• Both signals are equally likely.

• The received signal is

• Here,
: Additive noise component following a Gaussian distribution with zero mean
and variance .
• The conditional PDF of the received signal
when is transmitted,

When the signal is transmitted, the received

signal is a random process having Gaussian
symmetry around .

Similarly
•For equiprobable signal, the threshold is given by,

•i.e. the detector chooses when else chooses .

• The probability of error when is transmitted,

(i.e. the case while is transmitted)

Put So

And

When , then and , then .

So,
Here, is Q-function defined by
Similarly,

The average probability of error,

• The probability of error is a function of ratio of bit energy ( and noise PSD ()
i.e. signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).

• As the Q-function is a monotonically decreasing function, the probability of

error decreases with increase in SNR.

• The Euclidean distance between two signal points on vector space:

• So,
Case 2: Binary orthogonal signal: Two signal points are represented with two
orthonormal basis functions.

•The Euclidean distance between two signal points on vector space:

So,

•, i.e. maximum bit-error-rate is 0.5.