1354 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 55, NO.

7, JULY 2007
Reduced-Complexity Approach to Iterative Detection
of Coded SOQPSK
Erik Perrins, Senior Member, IEEE, and Michael Rice, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractWe develop a reduced-complexity approach for the
detection of coded shaped-offset quadrature phase-shift keying
(SOQPSK), a highly bandwidth-efcient and popular constant-
envelope modulation. The complexity savings result from viewing
the signal as a continuous-phase modulation (CPM). We give a sim-
ple and convenient closed-form expression for a recursive binary-
to-ternary precoder for SOQPSK. The recursive nature of this
formulation is necessary in serially concatenated systems where
SOQPSK serves as the inner code. We show that the proposed de-
tectors are optimal in the full-response case, and are near-optimal
in the partial-response case due to some additional complexity re-
ducing approximations. In all cases, the proposed detectors achieve
large coding gains for serially concatenated coded SOQPSK. These
gains are similar to those reported recently by Li and Simon, which
were obtained using a more complicated cross-correlated trellis-
coded quadrature modulation (XTCQM) interpretation.
Index TermsContinuous phase modulation (CPM), iterative
detection, reduced complexity, shaped offset quadrature phase
shift keying (SOQPSK), soft-input soft-output.
I. INTRODUCTION
I
N OFFSET quadrature phase-shift keying (OQPSK), the
quadrature component of the modulated carrier is delayed
half a symbol time relative to the inphase component to avoid in-
stantaneous 180

phase shifts. This is done to reduce the amount

of spectral regrowth when a nonlinear power amplier is used.
When nonreturn to zero (NRZ) pulses are used to shape the
inphase and quadrature components, the resulting modulated
carrier has a constant envelope, which is also desirable for use
with a nonlinear power amplier.
Increased spectral efciency can be obtained by using more
bandwidth-efcient pulse shapes on the inphase, and quadrature
components constrained to produce a modulated carrier with
constant (or quasi-constant) envelope. The use of the half-sine
pulse shape, which is equivalent to minimum-shift keying
(MSK) [2], is an example. Even better spectral efciency can be
achieved when the inphase and quadrature components are cross
correlated. One of the early versions of this type of modulation
was Feher-patented QPSK(FQPSK) [3]. The spectral efciency
improvement realized by using cross-correlated bandwidth
Paper approved by R. Kohno, the Editor for Spread Spectrum Theory
and Applications of the IEEE Communications Society. Manuscript received
June 2, 2005; revised March 6, 2006. This paper was presented in part at the
IEEE Military Communications Conference, Atlantic City, NJ, October 2005,
and in part at the IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference, St. Louis, MO,
November/December 2005.
E. Perrins is with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sci-
ence, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045 USA (e-mail: esp@ieee.org).
M. Rice is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602 USA (e-mail: mdr@ee.byu.edu).
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TCOMM.2007.900614
efcient pulses comes at the expense of intersymbol interfer-
ence. As a consequence, there is a detection efciency penalty
when using a symbol-by-symbol detection of these waveforms.
Simon and Yan later showed FQPSK to be a special case of
cross-correlated trellis-coded quadrature modulation (XTCQM)
[4][6]. This interpretation revealed the structure of the optimum
detector, and provided a performance bound as described in [7].
A parallel path in the development of bandwidth-efcient
constant-envelope waveforms is based on the observation that
binary CPM with modulation index h = 1/2 looks like off-
set QPSK. This observation has been applied since the 1980s
to investigate the use of offset quadrature demodulators for
detecting MSK [8][13]. Laurent formalized this relationship
in [14]. Laurents work formed the basis for the analysis of off-
set quadrature demodulators for the detection of Gaussian MSK
(GMSK) [15][20].
Dapper and Hill [21] described a form of CPM known as
shaped BPSK. This modulation evolved into the constrained,
ternary, full-response CPM using a rectangular frequency pulse
that forms the basis for the MIL-STD 188-181 UHF Satcom
standard [22]. This modulation is also known as shaped offset
QPSK (or SOQPSK-MIL), since it looks like an offset QPSK
with smoothed phase transitions. An even more bandwidth-
efcient partial-response version of SOQPSK, called SOQPSK-
TG, was adopted as an interoperable alternative to FQPSK in
the IRIG 106-04 standard for aeronautical telemetry [23].
Li and Simon [1] showed that SOQPSK-MIL can also be
represented as XTCQM. The XTCQM representation revealed
a method by which the inherent memory in the modulation can
be used as an inner code in a serially concatenated coded system
with an interleaver. This viewpoint provided the means by which
iterative detection could be implemented and analyzed. Li and
Simon provided performance results for both SOQPSK-MIL
and a novel reinterpretation of conventional OQPSK.
In this paper, we return to the CPM point of view of
SOQPSK, which provides a common framework for describ-
ing the two versions of SOQPSK. For full-response SOQPSK-
MIL, the CPM viewpoint alone is sufcient to achieve large
simplications. We show that optimal detection of the uncoded
waveform can be achieved using the same number of states
as in [1] (four states) but with one-fourth as many matched
lters (MFs). For partial-response SOQPSK-TG, on the other
hand, the optimal detector requires an enormous trellis of 512
states [24]. Therefore, additional complexity-reduction steps are
needed once the CPM viewpoint is taken.
looseness-1 We explore two possible reduced-complexity
techniques. The rst is the well-known PAM approximation
for CPM, which was recently extended in [25] to ternary CPMs
0090-6778/$25.00 2007 IEEE
PERRINS AND RICE: REDUCED-COMPLEXITY APPROACH TO ITERATIVE DETECTION OF CODED SOQPSK 1355
such as SOQPSK. The PAM technique allows the use of a sim-
ple four-state trellis with SOQPSK-TG at a loss of less than
0.1 dB in the uncoded case. This minor loss is attractive in the
light of the large reduction in the number of trellis states. The
second reduced-complexity option for SOQPSK-TG is the fre-
quency pulse truncation (PT) technique [26], which also allows
the use of the simple four-state trellis with a slightly larger loss of
0.2 dB in the uncoded case.
We apply these reduced-complexity detectors in constructing
decoders for serially concatenated coded SOQPSK. The per-
formance of serially concatenated coded CPM with iterative
detection has already been investigated in [27] and [28]. The
proposed systems are a special case of this previous work, with
the important distinction that SOQPSK consists of a binary-
to-ternary precoder and a CPM modulator; these jointly form
the inner code of the serially concatenated system. In order to
build these systems, we give a closed-form expression for the
recursive SOQPSK precoder found in [1] so that the precoder is
separated from the XTCQM viewpoint taken in [1]. This recur-
sive precoder is necessary to yield large coding gains in serially
concatenated systems. We then show that the proposed CPM-
based designs achieve large coding gains, which are similar to
those reported in [1] for serially concatenated coded SOQPSK
systems. In the coded systems, the performance loss for the
PAM approximation of SOQPSK-TG is less than a tenth of a
decibel, while the frequency PT approach has a loss of around
0.1 dB. Therefore, the reduced-complexity detectors have
smaller losses in the coded case than in the uncoded case. In
addition to this, the results also show that the more bandwidth-
efcient modulation (SOQPSK-TG) achieves the largest coding
gains, which is consistent with the conclusions in [1].
While the focus of the paper is on the two versions of
SOQPSKthat are in current use, the techniques developed herein
are general and can be used to to construct simplied decoders
for any partial-response variant of SOQPSK.
In Section II, we describe the signal model for SOQPSK and
the different precoders that are used for SOQPSK. In Section III,
we discuss the serially concatenated coding scheme, develop the
reduced-complexity decoding architectures for SOQPSK, and
give performance results. We give conclusions in Section IV,
which is followed by a separate treatment of uncoded systems
in the Appendix.
II. DESCRIPTION OF SOQPSK
A. CPM Signal Model
The SOQPSK signal is dened as a CPM [29] with the com-
plex baseband representation
s(t; )

= exp{j(t; )} (1)
where the phase is a pulse train of the form
(t; )

= 2h

i
q(t iT) (2)
and
i
{1, 0, 1} is a transmitted symbol, T is the duration of
each
i
, and h = 1/2 is the modulation index. The phase pulse
q(t) is usually thought of as the time-integral of a frequency
Fig. 1. Length-8T frequency pulse and corresponding phase pulse for
SOQPSK-TG.
pulse f(t) with area 1/2 and duration LT. When L = 1, the sig-
nal is full-response and when L > 1 it is partial-response. Due
to the constraints on f(t) and q(t), and the fact that the modu-
lation index is a rational number, the phase may be expressed
as
(t; ) = 2h
n

i=nL+1

i
q(t iT)
. .. .
(t)
+h
nL

i=0

i
. .. .

nL
(3)
where nT t < (n + 1)T. The phase state
nL
{0, /2,
, 3/2} can only assume four
1
distinct values when taken
modulo-2, which gives e
j
nL
{1, j}.
The SOQPSK versions differ by their respective frequency
pulses. In this paper, we will discuss two such versions. The
rst, SOQPSK-MIL [22], is full-response with a rectangular-
shaped frequency pulse
f
MIL
(t)

=

1
2T
, 0 t < T
0, otherwise
(4)
and a corresponding phase pulse q
MIL
(t). The second,
SOQPSK-TG [23], is partial-response with L = 8 and a fre-
quency pulse given by
f
TG
(t)

= A
cos

Bt
2T

1 4

Bt
2T

2

sin

Bt
2T

Bt
2T
w(t) (5)
where the window is
w(t)

=

1, 0

t
2T

< T
1
1
2
+
1
2
cos

T
2

t
2T
T
1

, T
1

t
2T

T
1
+T
2
0, T
1
+T
2
<

t
2T

.
The constant A is chosen to give the pulse an area of 1/2
and T
1
= 1.5, T
2
= 0.5, = 0.7, and B = 1.25. Fig. 1 shows
the frequency pulse in (5) and the corresponding phase pulse
q
TG
(t).
1
We use
i
{1, 0, 1} and h = 1/2 to be consistent with previous work
with SOQPSK. This notation is in conict with traditional CPMnotation, which
calls for
i
{2, 0, 2} when the data alphabet is ternary [30]. Thus, in strict
CPM terms, we really have h = 1/4, which is why there are four phase states.
1356 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 55, NO. 7, JULY 2007
Fig. 2. Signal model for uncoded SOQPSK.
B. SOQPSK Precoders
The characteristic that sets SOQPSK apart from ordinary
CPM is that the ternary data are the output of a precoder, as
shown in Fig. 2. The precoder converts the binary data a
n

{0, 1} into ternary data
n
according to the mapping [31]

n
= (1)
n+1
(2a
n1
1)(a
n
a
n2
). (6)
The original motivation for SOQPSK is that (6) leads to a sim-
ple (albeit suboptimal) symbol-by-symbol detection architec-
ture [21]. Conceptually speaking, we can separate the input bits
for even symbol times and odd symbol times into inphase (I)
and quadrature (Q) bit streams, as in
a
I,m
= a
2m
, a
Q,m
= a
2m+1
.
The role of the precoder is to orient the phase of the CPMsignal
in (2), such that it behaves like the phase of an OQPSK signal
that is driven by the bit sequence a. In fact, a can be recovered
directly from the received signal, with no additional steps, by a
suboptimal symbol-by-symbol OQPSK-type detector [21].
2
In
a sense, the precoder (6) undoes the innite phase response of
the CPM modulator, i.e., the phase state in (3), which in turn
allows the simple symbol-by-symbol detection architecture.
In this paper, we are interested in viewing SOQPSK as the
inner code in a serially concatenated coded system. Therefore,
we seek trellis-based detectors for the system in Fig. 2. Using
a
n1
, a
n2
, and n-even/n-odd from (6) as state variables, it has
been shown that eight states are required to describe the pre-
coder/CPM modulator pair [33]. If we construct a time-varying
trellis, with different sections for n-even and n-odd, then we
have the four-state trellis
3
shown in Fig. 3. The labels above
each branch show the input-bit/output-symbol pair a
n
/
n
for
the given branch using the precoder (6). The state variables are
ordered (a
n2
, a
n1
) for n-even and (a
n1
, a
n2
) for n-odd.
This means that the inphase bit of the pair is always most signi-
cant and the quadrature bit of the pair is always least signicant,
which is consistent with [31]. When n is even, the branch bit
a
n
replaces the inphase bit in the state variable, and likewise
for the quadrature bit when n is odd. The states in Fig. 3 are
labeled with S
n
{00, 01, 10, 11}. For a given time interval,
each branch has a unique value of the branch vector [a
n
, S
n
].
The mapping in (6) imposes the following three important
constraints on the ternary data [33].
1) While
i
is viewed as being ternary, in any given symbol
interval
i
is actually drawn from one of the two binary
alphabets, {0, 1} or {0, 1}.
2
Here the detection lter can be as simple as an integrate-and-dump operation,
although better performing options are explored in [32].
3
Note that each section of this time-varying trellis is dened over a single
bit interval. It is different from the four-state time-invariant trellis in [1, Fig. 2]
where each section spans two bit intervals.
Fig. 3. Four-state time-varying trellis. The labels above each branch are for
the standard precoder in (6), while the labels below each branch are for the
recursive precoder in (8). The branch labels indicate the input-bit/output-symbol
pair a
n
/
n
.
2) When
i
= 0, the binary alphabet for
i+1
switches from
the one used for
i
; when
i
= 0 the binary alphabet for

i+1
does not change.
3) A value of
i
= 1 cannot be followed by
i+1
= 1, and
vice versa (this is implied by the previous constraint).
Another useful precoder that satises these constraints can
be obtained by differentially encoding the original bits a
n
at
the transmitter. The differential (recursive) nature of this alter-
nate precoder formulation is essential when SOQPSK is used
as the inner code in a serially concatenated system [34]. The
differentially encoded bits are
d
n
= a
n
d
n2
(7)
where is the XOR operator for binary data in the set {0, 1}.
The precoder in this case is

n
= (1)
n
a
n
d

n1
d

n2
(8)
where d

n
{1, 1} is the antipodal counterpart of d
n
and is
given by d

n
= 2d
n
1. Although shown in equation form in
(8), this recursive precoder is the same as the one shown as a
block diagram in [1, Fig. 7].
As with (6), this recursive precoder leads to simple OQPSK-
type detectors, except that the output in this case is a stream
of differentially encoded bits. This precoder is also described
by the four-state time-varying trellis in Fig. 3. The labels below
each branch show the input-bit/output-symbol pair a
n
/
n
for
the recursive precoder. The state variables in this case are d
n1
and d
n2
and are ordered in the same inphase-MSB quadrature-
LSB fashion as before. A comparison of the labels above and
below each branch in Fig. 3 shows that the output symbols are
identical in the case of either precoder. The only difference is
the mapping from input bits to output symbols.
A key link between the SOQPSK precoders [either formu-
lation in (6) or (8)] and the CPM modulator is that the state
variable S
n
and the CPM phase state
nL
are interchangeable
as state variables. While not entirely unexpected, this useful
link was recently established and exploited in [35]. The one-to-
one mapping between the state variables S
n
{00, 01, 10, 11}
and the CPM phase states
nL
{0, /2, , 3/2} is shown
PERRINS AND RICE: REDUCED-COMPLEXITY APPROACH TO ITERATIVE DETECTION OF CODED SOQPSK 1357
Fig. 4. Mapping between the trellis states and phase states.
in Fig. 4, where it is evident that the CPM phase states are a
/4-rotated version of the traditional QPSK constellation. This
mapping implies that we could construct an equivalent four-state
trellis based on the four CPM phase states. The link between
the trellis states and phase states is essential to the complexity
reductions proposed herein.
III. ITERATIVE DETECTION OF CODED SOQPSK
A. System Description
The concatenated coded modulation scheme under consid-
eration is shown in Fig. 5. The encoder/transmitter portion of
the system consists of convolutional code (CC) encoder, an S-
random interleaver [36] (labeled as in the block diagram),
the recursive SOQPSKprecoder from(8), and a CPMmodulator.
Therefore, the CCserves as the outer code, and SOQPSKserves
as the inner code in a serially concatenated coding scheme. As
mentioned earlier, the recursive formulation of the precoder is
necessary to yield large coding gains from the concatenation of
the outer CC and the interleaver.
The received signal model is
r(t) = s(t; ) +n(t) (9)
where n(t) is complex-valued additive white Gaussian noise
(AWGN) with single-sided power spectral density N
0
. The re-
ceived signal is demodulated and decoded in an iterative fashion
by soft-input soft-output (SISO) modules from [27] and [37] for
SOQPSK and the CC, respectively. In order to model a prac-
tical reduced-complexity implementation, we use max-log
versions of these SISOs. Furthermore, the SOQPSK SISO has
simplied branch metrics, which are described momentarily.
The soft information exchanged between the two SISOs is in
the form of log-likelihood ratios, and is scaled by the gains K
1
and K
2
to improve performance [1], [38].
B. Reduced-Complexity SOQPSK SISO Module
In order to view SOQPSK as a code, the length-T segments
of the waveformare regarded as codewords. For full-response
SOQPSK, there are eight possible codewords for a given symbol
time, each with a unique value of the branch vector [a
n
, S
n
] from
the four-state trellis in Fig. 3. In the four-state SOQPSK SISO
module, the soft input probability for a given codeword is
P
n
([ a
n
,

S
n
]; Input) exp

z(n, [ a
n
,

S
n
])
N
0

(10)
Fig. 5. Block diagram of serially concatenated coded SOQPSK.
where a
n
and

S
n
are hypothetical values of the branch bit and
state variable, respectively. The term z(, ) is a generic branch
metric increment, two examples of which are given as follows.
Using standard CPM notation [29, Ch. 7], the branch metric
increment for full-response (FR) SOQPSK is
z
FR
(n, [ a
n
,

S
n
])

= Re

e
j

n1

(n+1)T
nT
r(t)e
j2h
n
q
FR
(tnT)
dt

(11)
where q
FR
(t) is a generic full-response phase pulse, a specic
example of which is q
MIL
(t). The hypothesized branch vector
[ a
n
,

S
n
] has a one-to-one correspondence with a hypothesized
ternary symbol
n
and a hypothesized CPMphase state

n1
, as
shown in Figs. 3 and 4, respectively. There are three complex-
valued MF outputs needed to implement (11) (one for each
possible value of the ternary
4

n
). The complex-valued MF out-
puts for
n
= 1 can be constructed from the same four real-
valued components due to the identities sin(x) = sin(x)
and cos(x) = cos(x). The MFresponse for
n
= 0 has a value
of unity for length-T, which is simply an integrate-and-dump
operation that requires no multiplications. Thus, only four real-
valued length-T ltering operations are required to implement
(11). By way of comparison, the XTCQM formulation in [1] for
SOQPSK-MIL requires 8 or 16 real-valued length-2T ltering
operations. Therefore, while both formulations are optimal, the
CPM-type branch metric increment in (11) reduces the lter-
ing requirements by a factor of four. We note that multiplying
by the factor e
j

n1
{1, j} in (11) does not require any
multiplication resources in a hardware implementation.
An entirely different formulation of the signal is given by
the PAM representation of CPM. In [25], it was shown that the
right-hand side of (1) can be written as
s(t; ) =
R1

k=0

i
b
k,i
c
k
(t iT). (12)
In this alternate form, the CPM signal is represented as the
linear combination of R pulses c
k
(t), which are modulated by
pseudosymbols b
k,i
. These terms are discussed in greater detail
in the Appendix. For the full-response case, we have R = 2.
Therefore, the signal is the superposition of only two modulated
4
Since the SISOmodule must consider all possible path histories, MF outputs
must be computed for the union of the two possible alphabets
n
{1, 0}
and
n
{0, 1} (c.f. Fig. 3).
1358 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 55, NO. 7, JULY 2007
TABLE I
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE TERNARY BRANCH SYMBOL
n
, THE BITS
1,n
AND
0,n
, AND THE PSEUDOSYMBOLS
k
(
n
) FOR SOQPSK
pulses c
0
(t) and c
1
(t), and a very simple PAM-based branch
metric increment results. The two pulses serve as MFs in the
detector, where the sampled MF output is
y
k
(n)

=

(n+D
k
)T
nT
r(t)c
k
(t nT) dt, 0 k 1 (13)
with D
0
= L + 1 and D
1
= L. These MF outputs are used to
compute the PAM-based branch metric increment
z
PAM
(n, [ a
n
,

S
n
])

= Re

e
j

n1
1

k=0
y
k
(n) [
k
(
n
)]

(14)
where []

is the complex conjugate. The pseudosymbols

k
()
in (14) are listed in Table I, and are derived in the Appendix. It
is to be noted that this alternate PAM metric is also a function
of [ a
n
,

S
n
] and, therefore, uses the four-state trellis in Fig. 3.
Evaluating (14) requires 2 (D
0
+D
1
) real-valued length-T
ltering operations, which amounts to six such operations for
SOQPSK-MIL. Therefore, while this represents another opti-
mal conguration for SOQPSK-MIL and has lower complexity
than the XTCQM model in [1], it does have slightly higher
complexity requirements than the CPM-based metric in (11).
So far, we have shown two SISO implementations for full-
response SOQPSK (and therefore, SOQPSK-MIL) that are op-
timal, and also simplied with respect to [1]. This has been
a straightforward task, since the trellis in Fig. 3 is the natu-
ral and optimal trellis for the full-response case. On the other
hand, constructing a counterpart to (10) for partial-response
versions, such as SOQPSK-TG, poses a greater challenge since
each increment in Lintroduces an additional binary-valued state
variable. For SOQPSK-TG, this amounts to a 512-state trellis.
Due to this overwhelming complexity, we pursue two different
near-optimum approximations for SOQPSK-TG instead of us-
ing the optimal detector. These approximations result in simple
detectors that are based on the four-state trellis in Fig. 3.
The rst approximation method for SOQPSK-TG is fre-
quency PT [26]. This method is discussed and analyzed in
greater detail in the Appendix, but the main concept is to base
the SISO module on the modied phase pulse
q
PT
(t) =

0, t < 0
q(t + (L 1)T/2), 0 t T
1/2, t > T.
(15)
It is to be noted that q
PT
(t) is such that its time-varying portion
is restricted to the interval [0, T], which gives it full-response be-
havior and allows its use in (11). Therefore, this approximation
Fig. 6. Two principal pulses for the PAM representation of SOQPSK-TG.
results in a xed complexity of four trellis states and four real-
valued length-T ltering operations in the decoder, regardless of
the actual version of SOQPSK used in the encoder/transmitter.
A second approximation method for SOQPSK-TG uses the
PAM approach as already discussed. With L = 8, the exact
PAMrepresentation of SOQPSK-TGin (12) requires R = 4374
pulses [25]. Therefore, in addition to a 512-state trellis, an op-
timal counterpart to (14) for SOQPSK-TG requires 4374 MFs.
However, a close approximation is obtained by ignoring (dis-
carding) all but the two most signicant pulses c
0
(t) and c
1
(t).
As a result, the architecture in (14) becomes generic for both
full- and partial-response cases, though it is only an approxima-
tion (i.e., suboptimal) in the case of partial-response SOQPSK.
The only part of the decoder that is specic to the modulated
waveform is the actual set of pulses (MFs) used in (13). These
two pulses are shown in Fig. 6 for SOQPSK-TG. Since the two
pulses have a combined duration of 9T + 8T = 17T, a total
of 34 real-valued length-T ltering operations are required to
implement (14) for SOQPSK-TG. However, it has been shown
that truncating these pulses to a combined total of seven real-
valued length-T MFs results in negligible performance losses
for SOQPSK-TG [39].
Given the different levels of MF complexity for the PAM and
PT implementations, the natural question to ask is: which tech-
nique performs better? This question is answered next for the
serially concatenated system in Fig. 5. The question of perfor-
mance is also taken up in the Appendix for the case of uncoded
systems.
C. Performance Results
We now investigate the performance of these reduced-
complexity designs in serially concatenated coded systems.
As mentioned earlier, the SISO modules use the max-log
approximation. When we take the log of (10), the dependence
on N
0
can be dropped; this simplication changes only the
value of the maximum metric, it does not change the identity
of the actual branch with the maximum metric (this is the same
behavior as the Viterbi algorithm, where the branch metrics
are also independent of N
0
, e.g., [29, Ch. 7]). In Fig. 5, the
unconnected CC SISO input is zero, and the lower input to the
SOQPSK SISO is initialized to zero for the rst iteration. There
are no termination bits added anywhere in the simulations,
and the decoder state metrics are initialized to zero for each
iteration. We use the same two outer codes that were used in [1]
to facilitate the evaluation of the reduced-complexity systems.
In both the cases, the number of iterations is N
I
= 5.
PERRINS AND RICE: REDUCED-COMPLEXITY APPROACH TO ITERATIVE DETECTION OF CODED SOQPSK 1359
Fig. 7. Performance of serially concatenated coded SOQPSK with iterative
detection.
The rst code is the optimal rate-1/2 four-state convolutional
code. The generator polynomials of this code are g
1
= 5 and
g
2
= 7, using the octal representation. The S-randominterleaver
has a block size of N = 2048 bits with S = 32. For SOQPSK-
MILwe select K
1
= 0.75 and K
2
= 0.75 [1], and for SOQPSK-
TG we select K
1
= 0.8 and K
2
= 0.75.
The second code is the optimal rate-3/4 code that is derived
from the rst code by puncturing two out of every six output
bits according to the puncturing matrix [40]
P =

1 0 1
1 1 0

where zeros represent output bits that are punctured. Here,

the interleaver parameters are N = 1364 and S = 26. For
SOQPSK-MIL we have K
1
= 0.7 and K
2
= 1 [1], and for
SOQPSK-TG we have K
1
= 0.75 and K
2
= 1.
The performance of these two codes is shown in Fig. 7. The
curves for SOQPSK-MIL are identical to those found in [1], but
are achieved here with lower complexity. The gure shows that
the performance of the optimal 512-state decoder for SOQPSK-
TGis slightly inferior to that of SOQPSK-MIL. Amore interest-
ing result, as the gure also shows, is that the highly-simplied
4-state PAM- and PT-based decoders for SOQPSK-TG have
near-optimal performance. For the rate-1/2 code at P
b
= 10
5
,
the PAM-based decoder for SOQPSK-TGis 0.02 dBworse than
the 512-state decoder (or 0.09 dB worse than SOQPSK-MIL),
while the PT-based decoder is 0.10 dB worse than the 512-
state decoder (or 0.17 dB worse than SOQPSK-MIL). Using the
same P
b
reference point for the rate-3/4 code, the PAM- and
PT-based decoders for SOQPSK-TG are, respectively, 0.08 and
0.18 dB worse than the 512-state decoder (or 0.16 and 0.26 dB
worse than SOQPSK-MIL, respectively). In terms of error per-
formance, it comes as no surprise that SOQPSK-TGis inferior to
SOQPSK-MIL, since SOQPSK-TGis more bandwidth-efcient
than SOQPSK-MIL and has a smaller minimum distance in the
uncoded case, as discussed in the Appendix. However, we make
the important observation that in the uncoded case the 512-
state, PAM-based and PT-based detectors for SOQPSK-TG are
0.3, 0.4, and 0.5 dB worse than SOQPSK-MIL, respectively.
Fig. 8. Performance of uncoded SOQPSK.
TABLE II
CODING GAINS (IN DECIBELS) FOR SERIALLY CONCATENATED SOQPSK WITH
ITERATIVE DETECTION
Therefore, we conclude that: 1) the more bandwidth-efcient
modulation achieves larger gains in these coded systems (this
conclusion was also reached in [1]), and 2) the gains for the
highly-reduced decoders for SOQPSK-TG can be larger than
those achieved by the optimal decoder. The gains for each coded
conguration are listed in Table II. The reference point for these
gains is the P
b
= 10
5
crossing point for the respective curves
in Figs. 7 and 8.
We note that Fig. 7 does not include analytical performance
bounds. In principle, such performance bounds are known for
CCs [34], and have been adapted to CPM [27]. However, these
bounds are difcult to compute for general CPM formats (i.e.,
those other than MSK), and do not necessarily yield useful
(tight) results for small E
b
/N
0
[27]. Furthermore, such ana-
lytical bounds are for maximum-likelihood sequence detection
(MLSD), which is not the performance goal of these reduced-
complexity decoders due to the small number of iterations, and
the max-log and other approximations. Instead, what is clearly
shown in Fig. 7 is that the proposed decoders are able to provide
large coding gains at a level of implementation complexity that
can be realized in a practical system.
IV. CONCLUSION
We have developed reduced-complexity detectors for
SOQPSK using a traditional CPM viewpoint. This viewpoint
alone produced simple detectors for full-response SOQPSK-
MIL. For SOQPSK-TG, the CPM viewpoint allows the use
of well-known approaches for reducing the complexity of
partial-response CPM. We explored the use of two such
1360 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 55, NO. 7, JULY 2007
techniques: the PAM approximation and frequency PT. We
have also given a closed-form expression for a useful recur-
sive SOQPSK precoder. We have established that the proposed
reduced-complexity schemes achieve optimal performance (in
the case of SOQPSK-MIL) or near-optimal performance (in the
case of SOQPSK-TG) with uncoded SOQPSK. We have also
shown that the proposed serially concatenated coding schemes
for SOQPSK-MILachieve the large coding gains reported in [1].
For SOQPSK-TG, the coding gains were slightly larger, and
were comparable to those reported in [1] for FQPSK. While
special attention was devoted to SOQPSK-MIL and SOQPSK-
TG, the reduced-complexity detectors are general and can be
used for all versions of SOQPSK.
APPENDIX
We begin by developing the two reduced-complexity detec-
tors for SOQPSK-TGthat are proposed in Section III-B; namely,
the PAM-based detector and the PT-based detector. We then es-
tablish that these detectors have near-optimum performance for
the uncoded case.
PAM REPRESENTATION OF SOQPSK
The PAM representation was originally developed for the
special case of binary CPM in [14]. It was recently extended to
the case of ternary CPM in [25]. This opens up the possibility
of applying the well-known complexity reduction properties of
PAM-based detectors [17] to the present case of SOQPSK.
In [25], it was shown that the right-hand side of (1) can be
written as
s(t; ) =
R1

k=0

i
b
k,i
c
k
(t iT), R = 2 3
L1
(16)
which is simply a linear combination of R pulses c
k
(t) that
are modulated by pseudosymbols b
k,i
. The pseudosymbols are
derived from the original data symbols
i
by a nonlinear map-
ping. Therefore, the nonlinear nature of CPM is isolated in the
pseudosymbols. The general denitions for b
k,i
and c
k
(t) are
found in [25].
For the purposes of constructing reduced-complexity de-
tectors for SOQPSK, we are interested only in the PAM
approximation
s(t; )

i
b
0,i
c
0
(t iT) +

i
b
1,i
c
1
(t iT) (17)
which uses just the rst two terms of the outer sum in (16). In
the case of SOQPSK-MIL, we have R = 2, so (17) is not an
approximation at all since it is the same as (16). For SOQPSK-
TG, we have R = 4374; thus, (17) truly is an approximation.
The two pulses in (17) are given by [25]
c
0
(t) =

L1

v=0
u(t +vT)

2
c
1
(t) = 2

L1

v=0
u(t +vT)

L1

v=0
u(t +vT +T)

(18)
where
u(t)

sin (q(t)/2) / sin(/4), 0 t < LT

sin(/4 q(t LT)/2)/ sin(/4), LT t < 2LT
0, otherwise.
These pulses, known as the principal pulses [25], are shown in
Fig. 6 for SOQPSK-TG. The two pulses have durations of D
k
symbol times, where
D
k
= L + 1 k, 0 k 1. (19)
The two pseudosymbols in (17) are given by [25]
b
0,i
= e
j
i 1
e
j
i
/2
b
1,i
=
1
2
e
j
i 1
(e
j
1, i
/4
+e
j
0, i
/4
). (20)
The binary antipodal digits
1,i
{1} and
0,i
{1} are
related to the ternary symbol
n
{1, 0, 1} by

i
=
1
2
(
1,i
+
0,i
) . (21)
When the two binary components are the same, i.e.,
1,i
=

0,i
, the values
i
= 1 are achieved. When the two binary
components oppose each other, i.e.,
1,i
=
0,i
, the value

i
= 0 is achieved. We point out that the two pseudosymbols in
(20) are: 1) independent of the frequency pulse length L and 2)
a function only of the phase state
i1
and the branch symbol

i
. Therefore, the PAM approximation in (17) can be described
by the four-state trellis in Fig. 3, regardless of the value of L.
Thus, we achieve a simultaneous reduction in the number of
trellis states and signal pulses (MFs). This is the standard result
with PAM-based detectors [17].
For implementation purposes, we factor the term containing
the phase state
i1
out of the pseudosymbols in (20). The
part that remains, i.e.,
k
(
i
), is a function only of the ternary
data symbol at index i. Table I lists the values of
k
(
i
)
as a function of the three possible values of
i
. With this
factorization, the branch metric increment for the PAM-based
detector is given by (14). The sampled MF outputs in (13) are
implemented with a delay of LT, since the longest pulse c
0
(t)
has a duration of D
0
= (L + 1)T. The PAM-based metric is
optimum in the case of SOQPSK-MIL, since two pulses are all
that are needed for the exact PAM representation. However, for
SOQPSK-MIL, the PAM approach is less desirable since it has
slightly higher ltering requirements than the traditional CPM
approach in (11). For SOQPSK-TG, the PAM-based metric in
(14) is suboptimum since the two pulses in Fig. 6 are only an
approximation. However, as has already been shown for coded
systems in Fig. 7, the two-pulse approximation is capable of
achieving near-optimum performance.
For uncoded systems, the PAM-based branch metric incre-
ment z
PAM
(n, [ a
n
,

S
n
]) can be used as the generic branch met-
ric increment z(n, [ a
n
,

S
n
]) in the Viterbi algorithm (VA) [29.
Ch. 7], as in

n+1
(

E
n
)

=
n
(

S
n
) +z(n, [ a
n
,

S
n
]) (22)
PERRINS AND RICE: REDUCED-COMPLEXITY APPROACH TO ITERATIVE DETECTION OF CODED SOQPSK 1361
where
n
() is the cumulative metric for a given state at index
n, and

E
n
is the hypothetical ending state for the branch with
[ a
n
,

S
n
].
PT FOR SOQPSK-TG
The other reduced-complexity detector for SOQPSK-TGuses
the frequency PT technique in [26]. This approach stems from
the fact that frequency pulses, which are long and smooth, are
often near-zero for a signicant portion of their duration. This is
clearly the case for f
TG
(t) in Fig. 1. Using these arguments, we
base the detector on a frequency pulse, which has been truncated
to a duration of one symbol time (full-response). Of course, the
detector uses a phase pulse instead of a frequency pulse; hence,
we translate these arguments accordingly and obtain a modied
phase pulse
q
PT
(t) =

0, t < 0
q(t + (L 1)T/2), 0 t T
1/2, t > T.
(23)
It is to be noted that the phase pulse in (23) is dened for all
values of t; however, its time-varying portion has been shortened
by a total of (L 1)T and is restricted to the interval [0, T]. The
truncation is centered such that half is applied to the beginning
of the pulse and half to the end. Since q
PT
(t) has variations only
in the time interval [0, T], it behaves like a full-response pulse.
It can be used with the four-state trellis in Fig. 3 and in the full-
response CPM metric z
FR
(n, [ a
n
,

S
n
]) in (11), which serves as
the branch metric increment for the Viterbi algorithm in (22).
PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF UNCODED SYSTEMS
The error performance of uncoded SOQPSK in AWGN is
described using error events and minimum distance concepts.
The normalized squared Euclidian distance of CPM is [29,
Ch. 2]
d
2
=
log
2
M
info
2T

|s(t;
Tx
) s(t;
Rx
)|
2
dt (24)
where log
2
M
info
is the number of information bits per symbol
(for SOQPSK, we have M
info
= 2). We consider the single-bit-
error sequences
a
Tx
= . . . , a
e1
, a
e
, a
e+1
, . . .
a
Rx
= . . . , a
e1
, a
e
, a
e+1
, . . . (25)
where the error location is arbitrarily chosen as a
e
. For
SOQPSK, we must compute (24) for all four possible values
of a
e1
and a
e+1
. These sequences are rst passed through the
precoder (6) to obtain
Tx
and
Rx
, after which the signals
s(t;
Tx
) and s(t;
Rx
) are generated. The minimum distance
d
0
corresponds to the two cases of (25) where a
e1
= a
e+1
.
The two cases where a
e1
= a
e+1
have a larger distance d
1
.
The probability of bit error for both SOQPSK-MIL and -TG is
bounded by
P
b

1
2
Q

d
2
0
E
b
N
0

+
1
2
Q

d
2
1
E
b
N
0

(26)
where E
b
/N
0
is the bit-energy-to-noise ratio and
Q(x) =
1

x
e
u
2
/2
du.
For SOQPSK-MIL, we have d
2
0
= 1.73 [1] and d
2
1
= 2.36. For
SOQPSK-TG, we have d
2
0
= 1.60 and d
2
1
= 2.59. Fig. 8 shows
the analytical curves for optimal detection of SOQPSK-MIL
and -TG, along with simulation results for the optimal MLSD
4- and 512-state detectors, respectively. Since the analytical and
simulation data are essentially identical, the simulation data is
shown as data points only while the analysis is plotted as a
curve. A reference curve for conventional OQPSK (d
2
0
= d
2
1
=
2) is also shown. From the simulation results in the gure and
the distance data, it is clear that the more bandwidth-efcient
SOQPSK-TG has a 0.3-dB disadvantage relative to SOQPSK-
MIL at P
b
= 10
5
.
The only difference for the recursive precoder (8) is that the
squared distances in (26) are associated with double-bit-error se-
quences, which is well-known [1]. Therefore, the performance
curves in Fig. 8 are accurate for the precoder (8) when they are
scaled by a factor of two. (This scale factor becomes inconse-
quential as E
b
/N
0
grows large.)
The distance properties of PAM-based CPM detectors were
recently studied in [41], where a distance measure analogous to
(24) was given. Using this distance measure, numerical distance
data for the PAM-based detector for SOQPSK-TG were gener-
ated in [39], and the resulting P
b
curve is shown in Fig. 8. This
analytical curve shows close agreement with data points from
computer simulations, also shown in Fig. 8. These results show
a 0.08-dB loss for the PAM-based detector relative to MLSD at
P
b
= 10
5
.
The distance properties of the PT method were studied in.
Applying this analysis to the present problem gives a P
b
curve
for PT-based detector for SOQPSK-TG. This analytical curve is
shown in Fig. 8 along with the simulation results (the numerical
distance data for the analytical curve are also given in [39]). The
PT-based detector is 0.18 dB inferior to MLSD at P
b
= 10
5
.
These results for SOQPSK-TG show that: 1) analytical and
simulation results show close agreement; 2) the PAM-based
detector is 0.10 dB superior to the PT-based detector; and 3)
for either reduced-complexity approach, the minor performance
loss is a welcome trade for the reduction in trellis states from
512 down to 4.
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Erik Perrins (S96M05SM06) received the B.S.
(magna cum laude), M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from
BrighamYoung University, Provo, UT, in 1997, 1998,
and 2005, respectively.
From 19982004, he was with Motorola, Inc.,
Schaumburg, IL, where he worked on advanced de-
velopment of land mobile radio products. Since 2004,
he has been an industry consultant on receiver design
problems such as synchronization and complexity re-
duction. He joined the faculty in the Department of
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Uni-
versity of Kansas, Lawrence, in August 2005. His research interests include
digital communication theory, advanced modulation techniques, synchroniza-
tion, channel coding, and complexity reduction in receivers.
Prof. Perrins is a member of the IEEE Communications Society.
Michael Rice (M82SM98) received the B.S.E.E.
degree from Louisiana Tech University, Ruston,
LA, in 1987 and the Ph.D. degree from Georgia
Tech, Atlanta, in 1991.
He was with Digital Transmission Systems, Inc.,
Atlanta, GA. He joined the faculty at Brigham Young
University, in Provo, UT, in 1991, where he is cur-
rently the Jim Abrams Professor in the Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He was a
NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellow with the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory during 1994 and 1995, where
he worked on land mobile satellite systems. From 1999 to 2000, he was a Visit-
ing scholar at the Communication Systems and Signal Processing Institute, San
Diego State University, San Diego, CA. His research interests include digital
communication theory and error control coding, in particular, applications to
telemetering and software radio design. He has been a Consultant to both gov-
ernment and industry on telemetry-related issues.
Prof. Rice is a member of the IEEE Communications Society. He was the
Chair of the Utah Section of IEEE from 1997 to 1999, and the Chair of the Sig-
nal Processing and Communications Society Chapter of the Utah Section from
2002 to 2003. He is currently the Vice-Chair for the Communication Theory
Technical Committee in the IEEE Communications Society. He is a Technical
Editor for Command, Control, and Communication Systems for IEEE TRANS-
ACTIONS ON AEROSPACE AND ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS.