Nonobvious correlation properties of quadrature GMSK, a modulation technique adopted worldwide

Abstract

GMSK is the world's most widely used modulation technique for mobile digital telephony and digital wireless applications. We describe two GMSK modulator structures, the voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) and the quadrature modulator structure. The tremendous advantages of the quadrature modulator structure for practical GMSK modulator implementations are emphasized. We present the results of computer simulations and hardware experimental measurements performed on GSM-standardized IC chips which are used by several million subscribers in order to illustrate the operation of a GMSK modulator. Since quadrature modulator structures are used in nearly all practical GMSK chipsets, the properties of this structure are of wide interest. In this paper we highlight the crosscorrelation properties of the GMSK in-phase and quadrature-phase baseband signals, which are part of the quadrature modulator structure. While uncorrelated in-phase and quadrature-phase baseband signals are used in traditional QPSK and OQPSK modulated systems, we demonstrate that there is strong crosscorrelation between the in-phase and quadrature-phase baseband signals. The crosscorrelation is stronger if the observation interval is shorter. Nonobvious quadrature modulator/radio crosscorrelation advantages were patented by Kato/Feher (1986). Design with crosscorrelated quadrature transmitter is "contrary to the wisdom of classical linear communications theory". Crosscorrelated quadrature modulated systems include FQPSK-KF and GMSK.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>