Because of the symmetry in most two-dimensional signal constellations, ambiguities exist at the receiver as to the exact phase orientation of the received signal set. In PSK systems, this ambiguity is resolved by the use of differential encoding. This paper presents differential encoding techniques which can be used with a variety of symmetric signal sets to remove their phase ambiguity. While not proven to be optimum, the techniques do have low performance penalties relative to the uncoded performance. The key to reducing the performance penalty is to use the minimum amount of differential encoding necessary to resolve the ambiguity. Examples of encoding techniques for several common signal constellations are given, including their performance penalties.

A bandwidth compressive modem making use of multiamplitude minimum shift keying (MAMSK) has been designed and implemented in a laboratory environment at microwave frequencies. This system achieves a substantial bandwidth reduction over binary PSK and operates within 0.5 dB of theoretical performance. A number of easily implemented microwave transmitters have been designed to generate the required set of 16 signals. The receiver has been designed to work at 1 Mbit/s and contains the necessary phase tracking, AGC, and symbol synchronization loops as well as a lock detector, SNR estimator and provisions for differential decoding. This paper describes this entire system and presents the experimental results.

An approach is presented for the analysis of phase-locked loops whose input signal has passed through time-varying channels. The specific channels considered in detail are the Rice-Nakagami, Rayleigh, and lognormal fading channels. Loop performance is characterized in terms of the steady-state probability density function of the reduced phase error process. The basic parameters which characterize performance include the loop signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the variance and bandwidth of the fading components introduced by the channel. Particular channel models are used to illustrate the theory for the firstorder loop. The results are also applied to the analysis of the PSK noisy reference problem in the presence of these time-varying channels.

In the above-named paper (ibid., vol. COM-24, pp. 487- 499, May 1976) the 'Acknowledgment' section was inadvertently omitted. It appears herein.

An automatic gain control (AGC) loop is presented for use withM-ary amplitude- and phase-shift keying (MAPSK) systems. The gain control amplifier is regulated by an error signal formed by the difference between the estimated amplitude level and the received amplitude level. The AGC performance is thus independent of the short-term average received signal energy. AGC loop analysis and simulation is presented forM-ary amplitude-shift keying (MASK) and quadrature amplitude-shift keying (QASK). The AGC is shown to have a negligible degradation on the symbol probability of error for most practical cases. A generalized AGC for an arbitrary MAPSK system is also presented.