Non‐coherent detection of digitally phase‐modulated signals with carbon nanotube cantilever vibration

Abstract

Towards the realisation of reliable communication systems using simple nanoscale transceivers, this Letter presents a method for the non-coherent detection of digitally phase-modulated signals. Without the synchronisation of the phases of the transmitted and received carrier signals, data transmission cannot be reliably achieved. To address this issue, the proposed method is developed using a nanoscale receiver that receives the binary phase-modulated signal through the mechanical vibration of a carbon nanotube cantilever. The present analysis reveals that this receiver has an interesting characteristic: the two decision statistics available in the receiver have a phase difference of π / 2 , which means that at least one of the statistics is fairly reliable regardless of the synchronisation error. Through the selection of the more reliable of the two statistics, the proposed method achieves low error in the estimation of the transmitted data even without carrier phase synchronisation. This Letter presents the derivation of the proposed rule for selecting the statistic and numerical results that demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. This Letter is expected to contribute to the realisation of future communication applications using nanoscale transceivers.