Parametric construction of Nyquist-I pulses

A novel parametric approach for constructing families of intersymbol-interference (ISI)-free pulses is presented and examined. Some new pulses so constructed have smaller maximum distortion, a more open receiver eye, and a smaller probability of error in the presence of symbol-timing error than the Nyquist raised-cosine pulse for the same excess bandwidth. The parametric approach gives more degrees of freedom in the design of ISI-free pulses, and subsumes previous ISI-free pulses as special cases. A number of theorems that relate time-domain behaviors of a pulse to the pulse's frequency spectrum are proved. A previously known result relating pulse tail-time decay to discontinuity of the pulse-frequency spectrum is corrected and clarified.