International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1999 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK) is a form of Continuous Phase Modulation (CPM) whose spectral occupancy can be easily tailored to the available channel bandwidth by a suitable choice of signal parameters. The constant envelope of the GMSK signal enables it to corporate with saturated power amplifier without the spectral re-growth problem. This paper provides a quantitative synopsis of binary GMSK signals in terms of their bandwidth occupancy and coherent demodulation performance. A detailed account of how to demodulate such signals using the Viterbi Algorithm (VA) is given, along with analytical power spectral density (PSD) and computer simulated bit-error-rate (BER) results for various signal BT products. The effect of adjacent channel interference (ACI) is also quantified. Ideal synchronization for both symbol time and carrier phase is assumed.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1999 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / A data-aided approach to symbol time and carrier phase synchronization applicable to general continuous phase modulation (CPM) signals with modulation index 0.5 is described. Simulated BER performance of two receivers equipped with these synchronizers is presented for a GMSK BT=1/5 signal received in noise with constant and dynamic synchronization errors. Results demonstrate that these synchronizers provide a very promising and yet simple solution to the tracking problem in the design of coherent CPM receivers.