Performance of Phase-Coherent Receivers Preceded by Bandpass Limiters

In phase-coherent communication systems, where bandpass limiters precede the radio frequency (RF) carrier tracking loop, it is of interest to understand how the noisy RF carrier reference effects system performance. This paper characterizes a model probability distribution for the RF phase error and uses this to predict the performance of phase-shifted keyed and differentially coherent systems. The theory developed is directly applicable to the Mariner- and Pioneer-type communication systems. For these systems two physical situations are considered: 1) system performance when the phase error is constant over the duration of one bit, and 2) system performance when the phase error is allowed to vary over the duration of one bit.