Low-Complexity LMMSE–SIC Turbo Receiver for Continuous Phase Modulation, Based on a Multiaccess–Multipath Analogy

Abstract

Low-complexity iterative reception of Continuous Phase Modulation (CPM) is addressed using Linear Minimum Mean-Square Error (LMMSE) filtering empowered by Soft Interference Cancellation (SIC). The transmitter emits a convolutionally encoded, true CPM signal with a constant envelope. The receiver exploits Laurent–Mengali–Morelli’s (LMM) decomposition to reduce the detection complexity, where the transmitted true CPM signal is approximated as a superposition of a small number of parallel Pulse Amplitude Modulated (PAM) and phase–encoded terms. Pulses and phase–encoded pseudo-symbols arising from the LMM decomposition are treated, respectively, as parallel Inter–Symbol Interference (ISI) channels and Multiple Access Interference (MAI) components. Hence the transmitted signal is regarded to inherently contain controlled ISI and MAI, which are equalized for at the receiver front-end using LMMSE–SIC filters. The receiver back-end comprises a serially concatenated turbo scheme encompassing a Soft Input–Soft Output (SISO) CPM detector and a SISO channel decoder. Simulations conducted on various CPM schemes show that the proposed receiver provides significant complexity reduction for a small performance penalty. Consequently, CPM waveforms with long pulses, which have traditionally been deemed infeasible due to the prohibitive complexity, can now be implemented employing the proposed receiver. Hence substantial spectral side-lobe compaction offered by long CPM pulses can be harnessed.