Performance of quasi-constant envelope phase modulation through nonlinear radio channels

This paper studies the performance of phase modulation through a fully saturated power amplifier and AWGN channel for broadband wireless systems. A nonlinear model for the fully saturated power amplifier is derived. The equivalent impulse response method is provided to analyze the SNR degradation. Both convolutional code and turbo code are used. The Viterbi decoding and the iterative decoding are employed, respectively. Near optimal BER performance is achieved employing either convolutional code or turbo code. The simulation results match the derivation. Therefore, it is practical to employ phase modulation and fully saturated power amplifiers in broadband wireless/satellite networks and sensor networks for ideal battery life, low cost and high terminal reliability.