Multiple Symbol Differential Detection of MPSK in

the Presence of Frequency Offset

Amir Masoud Rabiei, Student Member, IEEE and Norman C. Beaulieu, Fellow, IEEE
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2V4
Email: rabiei@ece.ualberta.ca ; beaulieu@ece.ualberta.ca
AbstractThe conventional multiplesymbol differential de-
tection (MSDD) of differential phaseshift keying (DPSK) signals
is studied in the presence of frequency offset. It is shown that
in the case of nonzero frequency offset, the performance of the
conventional MSDD receiver degrades by increasing the number
of observed samples. A double DPSK (DDPSK) modulation
scheme is then introduced and it is shown that in the presence of
nonzero frequency offset, an MSDD receiver with DDPSK mod-
ulation outperforms a conventional MSDD receiver with DPSK
modulation, when both receivers use a large number of received
samples. Examples lead to a conjecture that the performance
of an optimum MSDD receiver with DDPSK modulation and
an innite number of received samples, approaches that of a
conventional DPSK demodulator with two received samples.
I. INTRODUCTION
Noncoherent detection of phaseshift keying (PSK) signals
is a wellknown strategy used to mitigate the performance
degradation due to unknown phase offset, introduced by a
practical transmission channel. When the phase offset is un-
known but timeinvariant, the constellation rotation due to the
phase offset can be removed using a differential PSK (DPSK)
modulation scheme [1]. This approach, however, needs higher
signaltonoise power ratios (SNRs) than coherent detec-
tion to achieve the same average bit error rate (BER) [1].
An attractive approach to mitigate this SNR loss is called
multiplesymbol differential detection (MSDD) [2][4]. This
detection technique is, in fact, a general case of conventional
differential detection that uses more than two consecutive
received samples to detect the information symbols. In [3], it is
shown that by increasing the number of received samples in a
MSDD receiver, the receivers performance can approach that
of a coherent receiver at a cost of additional complexity. The
MSDD receiver proposed in [3], assumes that the frequency
offset equals zero. In the case of nonzero frequency offset,
the conventional MSDD technique must take the frequency
offset into account; otherwise, when increasing the number
of received samples which contribute in the receivers metric,
the performance of the receiver degrades very quickly [9]. In
order to overcome this difculty a double DPSK (DDPSK)
modulation scheme has been proposed [5][9], which is
indeed a secondorder phase difference modulation. In [9],
two type of demodulators for this modulation scheme have
been introduced, the autocorrelation demodulator (ACD) and
the optimum IQ demodulator. Reference [9] also proposed
an MSDDbased ACD demodulator for DDPSK signals and
showed that this structure is frequency offset invariant. Never-
theless, even under the most optimistic conditions, i.e. innite
number of received samples and SNR , the proposed
receiver in [9] still needs 3 dB more SNR to achieve the same
BER as an optimum coherent detector with DPSK modulation
[9].
In this paper, we rst modify the conventional MSDD
receiver with DPSK modulation for the case of nonzero
frequency offset and show that the modied MSDD receiver
has to estimate the frequency offset for optimum detection.
We propose a simple leastmean square (LMS) type estimator
to estimate the frequency offset along with the information
symbol in each symbol interval and study the drawbacks which
make it unreliable. Finally, we use an MSDDbased optimum
demodulator to demodulate a DDPSK signal and show that
the receiver is not sensitive to frequency offset. When the
frequency offset is zero, the proposed method suffers from
a SNR loss compared to a conventional MSDD with DPSK
modulation. However, it will be shown that this loss can be
effectively compensated by using more received samples in
the receiver.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section II, we present
the system model and modify the conventional MSDD receiver
for the case of nonzero frequency offset. In Section III, we
present the optimum MSDDbased demodulator for DDPSK
signals. Numerical results and conclusions are presented in
Section IV.
II. SYSTEM MODEL AND MODIFIED MSDD RECEIVER
Consider communication over an additive white Gaussian
noise (AWGN) channel. Assuming perfect symbol timing at
the receiver, the baseband equivalent received signal can be
expressed as
r
k
= s
k
e
j(k+)
+n
k
(1)
where 2f
o
T, s
k
is the information symbol at the kth
symbol interval, n
k
is the AWGN sample at the kth symbol
interval with mean zero and variance

2
n
=
1
2
E{n
k
n

k
} =
N
0
T
(2)
T is the symbol interval and f
o
and are the frequency
offset and phase offset, respectively. Note that f
o
may be
introduced either by the channel or by the frequency mismatch
between the carriers of the transmitter and receiver. Obviously,
0-7803-8939-5/05/$20.00 (C) 2005 IEEE
the nonzero frequency offset rotates the constellation around
the origin with a radial speed of 2f
o
rads./sec. and can
make the conventional detection techniques irrelevant if is not
taken into account at the receiver. Assume now, a wellknown
DPSK modulation scheme is used to modulate the information
symbols, then the kth transmitted symbol can be written as
s
k
=

2P e
j
k
(3)
where P is the transmitters power and
k
{2m/M}
M1
m=0
is
the encoded phase at the kth interval. In a DPSK modulation
scheme the kth transmitted phase is dened as

k

k

i=1

i
(4)
where

i
is the ith information, i.e. uncoded, phase. Clearly,

i
can be written as

i
=
i

i1
. Assume that the term
e
jk
in (1) is absorbed into s
k
, then (1) can be rewritten as
r
k
= u
k
e
j
+n
k
(5)
where
u
k

2P e
j(
k
+k)
=

2P e
j[

k
i=1
(

i+)]
. (6)
This is equivalent to a system with zero frequency offset whose
information phases are chosen from {2m/M+}
M1
m=0
. Note
that if we set f
o
= 1/2TM (or equivalently = /M)
in (6), then for each phase

i
, the phases

i
+ 2/M and

i
2/M are more likely to be detected than the actual phase.
Thus, the average BER will be approximately
1
1/ log
2
M even
for high values of E
b
/N
0
, i.e. an irreducible error oor occurs.
Moreover, the larger the value of M, the more severe the
sensitivity to the frequency offset will be. For example, for
M = 2 and large SNR values, the error oor does not exist
as long as || < /2 while for M = 16 the error oor is not
there only if || < /16. Now, assume that N consecutive
samples are available at the kth symbol interval and
has a uniform distribution over [0, 2). Then the maximum-
likelihood receiver should maximize the metric [3]

N1

i=0
r
ki
u

ki

2
(7)
or equivalently

r
kN+1
+
N2

i=0
r
ki
e
j

Ni2
m=0
(

kim
+)

2
(8)
over all possible values of {

ki
}
N2
i=0
and , where || and ()

denote the absolute value and complex conjugate, respectively.

After ignoring the constant terms, the metric in (8) can be
simplied to
=
_
N2

i=0
N1

l=i+1
r
ki
r

kl
e
j [(li)+

li1
m=0

kim]
_
(9)
1
We assume that the receiver makes use of gray encoding to map bits to
symbols.
where {} denotes the real part. Note that maximizing the
metric given in (9) may be realized either by a properly
dened tree diagram, or by searching a trellis diagram using
the Viterbi algorithm, i.e. noncoherent sequence detection [10].
In the conventional receiver, the information phases are chosen
from {2m/M}
M1
m=0
instead of {2m/M +}
M1
m=0
. This is
identical to ignoring the (l i) term in the exponent of
the exponential term in (9). When N increases, ignoring the
(li) term has more deleterious effect on the metric, because
for larger values of N more terms with large (l i) exponent
are present, and by ignoring these terms the metric in (9) is no
longer optimum. In other words, by increasing N in this case,
the receivers performance degrades rapidly, in contrast to the
case when the frequency offset equals zero where increasing
N improves the receivers performance. For a binary DPSK
signal and N = 2 the error probability is shown to be [9]
P
e
=
1
2
_
1 Q(

b,

a) Q(

a,

b)
_
(10)
where
a =
PT
N
0
_
sin

2

2
_
2
(1 cos ) (11)
b =
PT
N
0
_
sin

2

2
_
2
(1 + cos ) (12)
and Q(a, b) is the Marcum Qfunction dened as
Q(a, b) =
_

b
x e

a
2
+x
2
2
I
0
(ax)dx (13)
where I
0
(x) is the zerothorder modied Bessel function of
the rst kind. For larger values of N the evaluation of the
probability of error is quite difcult, if not impossible.
A straightforward approach for removing the effect of
on the receiver is to estimate along with the informa-
tion symbols and then choose the information phases from
{2m/M +

}
M1
m=0
rather than {2m/M}
M1
m=0
, where

is
the estimate of . In general, nding the exact value of that
maximizes together with a hypothesis data sequence in (9)
is very difcult. A very simple candidate to replace the exact
evaluation of is to use an adaptive estimator to estimate
. Assume that a least mean square (LMS) type estimator is
used. Then the recursion equation expressing the estimator is
given by [11]

k
=

k1

()

k1
=

k1
+
_
N2

i=0
N1

l=i+1
(l i) r
ki
r

kl
e
j [(li)

k1
+

li1
m=0

kim]
_
(14)
where

k
is s estimate at the kth time interval, is the
step size and {} denotes the imaginary part of a complex
0-7803-8939-5/05/$20.00 (C) 2005 IEEE
number.
For example, when N = 2, eq. (14) becomes

k
=

k1
+
_
r
k
r

k1
e
j(

k1
+

k
)
_
. (15)
Assume that the receiver does not have any initial informa-
tion about . Then, the receiver assumes that equals some
arbitrary value
0
2
and nds a hypothesis data sequence that
maximizes in (9). The resulting data sequence is then used
by the LMS estimator whose recursion equation is given by
(14) to nd the new estimate of , which in turn, is used for
detecting the next data sequence.
An inherent difculty with the LMS estimator discussed
above is that if

kim
and are shifted by any arbitrary value
of in opposite directions, the metric remains unchanged.
This can be readily seen in the metric given by (8). In partic-
ular, if we have an ambiguity of 180

in , the receiver may

detect s
k
instead of s
k
while still maximizing the metric.
This causes a severe degradation in the receivers performance.
As we know, this problem also occurs in PSK modulation
schemes which make use of a phase offset estimator (e.g. a
phaselocked loop). Thus, the effect of nonzero on a DPSK
signal is like the effect of nonzero phase offset on a coherent
PSK signal. Furthermore, as we will see in Section IV, an
LMStype estimator may be sensitive to the initial value of
, i.e.
0
, and in some cases might lock onto wrong values
of .
III. FREQUENCY OFFSET INSENSITIVE DIFFERENTIAL
DETECTION
Assume that frequency offset and phase offset are constant
over a sequence of N successive samples. Then, using (1) one
can dene a new variable r
k
as
r
k
r
k
r

k1
= s
k
s

k1
e
j
+ n
k
(16)
where
n
k
s
k
e
j(k+)
n

k1
+n
k
s

k1
e
j[(k1)+]
+n
k
n

k1
.
(17)
Assume further that an MPSK modulation is used (i.e. s
k
is
given by (3)). Then the rst and second terms in the right
side of (17) are independent Gaussian random variables with
mean zero and variance 2P
2
n
. The last term, however has a
complicated probability density function (pdf) and nding its
pdf is very difcult [1]. Fortunately, for practical values of
E
b
/N
0
, the last term is relatively small compared to the rst
two. So, we neglect this term and assume that n
k
is a zero
mean Gaussian random variable with variance
2
n
= 4P
2
n
.
Assume now that has a uniform distribution over the interval
[0, 2)
3
. Then using (3) and (16) in (7) and neglecting the
2
The value
0
may be a very inaccurate estimate of the actual .
3
Clearly, 2K (K integer) have the same effect as in (17), so it
sufces to consider the values of that are between 0 and 2.
constant terms, the new metric will be
=

N1

i=0
r
ki
e
j(
ki

ki1
)

2
. (18)
Note that in this case we need N + 1 samples to detect
N1 information symbols. Clearly, is not sensitive to any
arbitrary phase shift applied to the exponential term in (18)
[3]. Assume this arbitrary phase to be

kN+1
(i.e. multiply
the argument of | | by e
j

kN+1
). Then (18) can be rewritten
as
=

N1

i=0
r
ki
e
j(

ki

kN+1
)

2
. (19)
But

ki

kN+1
=

ki

ki1
+

ki1
+. . .

kN+2
+

kN+2

kN+1
=
Ni2

m=0

kim
(20)
where now

k
=

k1
is the information phase at the
kth time interval. So (19) becomes
=

r
kN+1
+
N2

i=0
r
ki
e
j

Ni2
m=0

kim

2
. (21)
From (21) it can be readily seen that the metric does not
depend on and . So the resulting decision rule is neither
sensitive to frequency offset nor phase offset. Assume that

1
=
0
= 0. Then, using

k
= 2
k1

k2
+

k
(22)
one obtains

1
=

2
= 2

1
+

3
= 3

1
+ 2

2
+

3
.
.
.

k
=
k

i=1
(k i + 1)

i
. (23)
Interestingly, eq. (23) can be rewritten as

k
=
k

i=1
First DPSK
..
i

m=1

m
. .
Second DPSK
. (24)
Encoding the information symbols using (24) is equivalent
to encoding the information symbols using a DPSK encoder
once and then encoding the resulting symbols one more time
with the same encoding rule. This means that the proposed
encoding method does not need a new encoder and two con-
secutive DPSK encoders can be used to encode the information
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symbols. For binary DPSK signals and N = 2, the receivers
probability of the error is given by [12], [7]
P
e
=
1
2

4
_
PT
N
0
_3
2
e

3PT
2N
0

m=0
(1)
m
2m+ 1
_
I
m
_
PT
N
0
_
+I
m+1
_
PT
N
0
__
2

_
I
2m+
1
2
_
PT
N
0
_
+I
2m+
3
2
_
PT
N
0
__
(25)
where I
m
() is the mth order modied Bessel function of
the rst kind. For M > 2, an exact expression for the bit
error probability is not known, however, an upper bound for
the symbol error probability can be found as [12]
P
e,symbol
1

2
_
PT
N
0
_3
2
e

3PT
2N
0

m=0
(1)
m
2m+ 1
_
I
m
_
PT
N
0
_
+I
m+1
_
PT
N
0
__
2

_
I
2m+
1
2
_
PT
N
0
_
+I
2m+
3
2
_
PT
N
0
__
cos
_
(2m+ 1)
2
_
M 2
M
__
. (26)
IV. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
Eqs. (10) and (25) as well as computer simulations have
been used to compare the BER performance of the proposed
MSDD receiver (with DDPSK modulation) with that of con-
ventional MSDD with DPSK modulation for the case when
frequency offset is nonzero.
We have used the LMS estimator, dened by (14), to
estimate for a conventional MSDD receiver with binary
DPSK modulation, N = 2 and = 1.2 rad. for the cases when

0
= 0 rad. and
0
= 3.5 rad.. The results are shown in Fig.
1. From this gure, one can easily see that when
0
= 3.5 rad.
in (14), the estimator has locked onto +. This is equivalent
to a 180

shift in the actual constellation and detecting s

k
instead of s
k
. So an LMS estimator is very sensitive to the
initial choice of

k
and might result in a false lock onto +,
even though it may provide accurate estimation of .
Fig. 2 shows the average BER of a conventional MSDD
receiver as a function of for N = 2, 4 and 9 and binary
DPSK modulation. It can be seen from Fig. 2 that by increas-
ing , the average BER of the MSDD receiver increases for
all values of N. Moreover, the receiver with larger N is more
sensitive to the frequency offset than receivers with smaller
N. For example, = 0.25 rad. increases the BER of the
MSDD receiver with N = 9 approximately 100 times, while
this increase for the case N = 2 is almost 2 times. In other
words, when is not equal to zero, increasing N in the MSDD
receiver, degrades the performance very rapidly.
The performance of the proposed and conventional MSDD
receivers with binary DPSK modulation for = 0.75 and
some values of N are depicted in Fig. 3. From this gure,
one can see that as N increases, the BER performance of
the proposed receiver decreases while the performance of
the conventional MSDD receiver is best for N = 2 and
deteriorates progressively for N = 4 and N = 9. Furthermore,
when N = 4 and 9 the conventional receiver has an error rate
oor. Simulation results for the proposed and conventional
receivers with DQPSK modulation and = 0.4 are shown
in Fig. 4. Again, the conventional MSDD receiver has the
best performance when N equals 2 and for larger values of
N the performance becomes poor very quickly. Moreover,
the proposed receivers BER can be decreased by increasing
the value of N. Interestingly, for binary DDPSK modulation,
when BER equals 10
5
the MSDD receiver with N = 16
needs approximately 1.2 dB more SNR to achieve the same
BER as coherent BPSK in AWGN. However, the MSDD
based ACD demodulator proposed in [9] has a minimum
penalty of 3 dB relative to coherent reception of BPSK even
when N and SNR . This clearly means that the
proposed receiver in this paper performs more efciently than
the receiver proposed in [9]. But what is the BER performance
of the optimum MSDD receiver with DDPSK modulation for
N ? Although answering this question mathematically
seems quite difcult, we can gain insight to an answer as
follows. The optimum decision rule for detecting a single
symbol transmitted over an AWGN channel for PSK, DPSK
and DDPSK modulations is given by
PSK: arg max

k
_
r
k
e
j
k
_
(27)
DPSK: arg max

k
_
r
k
r

k1
e
j
k
_
(28)
DDPSK: arg max

k
_
r
k
r

k1
_
r
k1
r

k2
_

e
j
k
_
(29)
respectively, where
k

_
2m
M
_
M1
m=0
. It has been shown
that by using an MSDD receiver and an innite number
of received samples, the performance of a coherent receiver
whose decision rule is given by (27) can be approached when
a DPSK modulation scheme is used [3]. Replacing r
k
r

k1
with r
k
and r
k1
r

k2
with r
k1
in (29) one can get the
same decision rule as (28) for DDPSK modulation with r
k
replaced by r
k
. Thus, one can generalize the fact given for
DPSK modulation to the case of DDPSK, i.e. the performance
of an MSDD receiver with DDPSK modulation and N
approaches that of a regular DPSK receiver with N = 2,
whose decision rule is given by (28). Our simulation results
support this conjecture for the case that M = 2, i.e. binary
modulation, as shown in Fig. 3. From this gure it can be
readily seen that for larger values of N the BER versus SNR
curve of the MSSD receiver becomes closer and closer to
that of the regular DPSK (note the diminishing returns as N
increases from 2 to 16.) When N = 16, the MSDD receiver
needs approximately 0.45 dB more SNR than a regular DPSK
receiver to achieve an average BER of 10
5
. Moreover, for
the values of N we have examined, the MSSD receiver with
DDPSK modulation cannot outperform the regular DPSK
receiver.
Note, however, that for both BPSK and QPSK modulations,
0-7803-8939-5/05/$20.00 (C) 2005 IEEE
0 100 200 300 400 500
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5

Number of symbols
Exact
Estimated with
0
= 0
Estimated with
0
= 3.5
Fig. 1. Estimated using LMS estimator in the conventional MSDD receiver
with binary DPSK modulation for N = 2 and different values of
0
.
0 0.5 1 1.5
10
3
10
2
10
1

A
v
e
r
a
g
e

B
E
R
BPSK, N = 2
BPSK, N = 4
BPSK, N = 9
Fig. 2. Average BER of the conventional MSDD receiver as a function of
with binary DPSK modulation for SNR= 8 dB and N = 2, 4 and 9.
the performance of the new receiver BER is inferior to that of
the perfect coherent receiver, i.e. both and are zero. This
is the cost incurred by the new receiver for having robustness
to both frequency and phase offsets.
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