A low-power all-digital FSK receiver for space applications

Abstract

A frequency-shift keying (FSK) receiver has been designed for deep space applications which exhibits potential for ultra low power performance. The receiver is based on a novel, almost all-digital architecture. It supports a wide range of data rates and is very robust against large and fast frequency offsets due to Doppler. The architecture utilizes subsampling and 1-bit data processing together with a discrete Fourier transform-based detection scheme to enable power consumption dramatically lower than implementations reported in the literature. Novel and power-efficient algorithms are derived for frequency and timing tracking. Most of the power saving techniques are applicable to a variety of applications, but some are achieved by taking advantage of the asymmetric power constraints for the receiver and the transmitter as well as the absence of adjacent channel interferers. The worst-case bit-error rate (BER) performance of the receiver is just 2.5 dB below that of the optimal uncoded noncoherent FSK receiver at a BER of 10/sup -6/ and better for lower BERs.