The Combined Effect of Modulator Imbalances and Amplifier Nonlinearity on the Performance of Offset Quadrature-Phase-Shift-Keyed (OQPSK) Systems

Imbalances from imperfect phase modulators can cause distorted signal constellations and interfering tone signals at the carrier frequency in phase-modulated communication systems. The rendered imperfection in the modulated signal inevitably degrades the receiver’s carrier-tracking performance and, for quadraturephase-shift-keyed (QPSK) systems in particular, causes cross-talk between the inphase and quadrature-phase channels. Previous studies have analyzed the impact from the amplitude and phase imbalances on an offset QPSK (OQPSK) communication system with the assumption of a linear channel. This article extends such efforts by including a fully saturated radio-frequency (RF) amplifier in the analytical model. Both carrier-suppression level and bit-error performance are addressed in this article, showing that the amplifier nonlinearity greatly alleviates the impact from modulator imbalances. With current Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) recommendations of a 2-deg-maximum permissible phase imbalance and a 0.2-dB-maximum permissible amplitude imbalance, a 34-dB or more carrier suppression and a system degradation of 0.27 dB or less at an uncoded biterror probability of 10−4 are achievable when the OQPSK system is operated in a reasonable loop signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) region. These results are 9-dB better in terms of carrier suppression and 0.6-dB better in terms of system degradation than those with linear amplifiers at the aforementioned bit-error probability.