Exact analysis of different detector algorithms for NDA carrier phase recovery of 16/32-APSK signals

In the new digital video broadcasting standard for satellite communications (DVB-S2), 16- and 32-ary amplitude-phase shift keying (APSK) are recommended as complementary modulation schemes to 4-PSK and 8-PSK. For carrier phase recovery with feedback loops, decision-directed (DD) and non-data-aided (NDA) detector algorithms are basically applicable. In some recent papers, however, a hybrid NDA/DD solution has been suggested for this purpose, although not analysed in detail. Motivated by this observation, the hybrid algorithms are investigated in this paper in terms of detector characteristic (S-curve) and jitter variance as the main figures of merit in this respect, with an additional design parameter introduced for optimisation. For comparison reasons, results for power-law and monomial-based Viterbi and Viterbi (V&V) trackers, as classical NDA solutions, are derived as well. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.