International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1993 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / A composite PCM/FM+FM/FM system combines the spectral efficiency of the analog system with the accuracy of a PCM system when needed for specific sensors and allows the direct transmission of binary computer words if necessary. A PCM/FM+FM/FM system combines the bit sequence with the modulated subcarriers at baseband and the resultant modulates the carrier. In the design of the composite system it is of importance to determine the impact of the subcarriers on the bit error rate of the bit sequence and to determine the degradation of the output signal-to-noise ratio of the subcarrier channels caused by the bit sequence.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1993 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / A typical PCM/FM system is designed for a peak to peak carrier deviation of 0.7 times the bit rate of the PCM data. This value of PCM data deviation has been shown to be optimum for both PCM/FM [1] and PCM/FM+FM/FM [2] systems. However, the optimum deviation of the carrier by the FM subcarrier for a PCM/FM+FM/FM system is dependent upon the specific subcarrier type and required subcarrier signal to noise ratio at the receiver output. This paper introduces a simple method to calculate the optimum deviation of the carrier by FM subcarriers for a PCM/FM+FM/FM system. The method developed is used to calculate the optimum value of subcarrier deviation for two sample PCM/FM+FM/FM systems when IRIG constant bandwidth channels are used as FM subcarriers. The calculated optimum values of FM subcarrier deviation of the carrier, subcarrier mod index, are utilized in a companion paper to study the performance of PCM/FM+FM/FM systems [3]. The work presented herein can be extended to calculate the optimum deviation of the carrier by FM subcarriers for any PCM/FM+FM/FM system.