New method of analyzing BER performance of GFSK with postdetection filtering

This paper describes the theoretical performance of a frequency-hopping system using Gaussian-filtered FSK (GFSK), which is a promising candidate for 2.4-GHz wireless local area networks (WLAN). We have improved previous methods to calculate the bit-error rate (BER) performance of the GFSK system by considering the effect of a postdetection filter in the first-order approximation. The improved method is applicable when the single-sided bandwidth of the postdetection filter is wider than the bandwidth containing 99% of the GFSK signal energy. It is used to calculate the BER performance as well as the dependence of the BER on the level of interchannel interference. The calculated performance of the GFSK system suggests that the postdetection filter is very effective in reducing interchannel interference. The feasibility of a GFSK system with a 1-Mbd symbol rate and 0.32 modulation index is confirmed by the combination of a predetection filter with a 0.85-MHz bandwidth and a postdetection filter with a 0.8-MHz single-sided bandwidth.