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Minimizing Implementation Loss in Soft-Decision GMSK Demodulators

Award Information
Agency: National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Branch: N/A
Contract: NNX10CD87P
Agency Tracking Number: 094258
Amount: $99,997.00
Phase: Phase I
Program: SBIR
Solicitation Topic Code: O1.01
Solicitation Number: N/A
Timeline
Solicitation Year: 2009
Award Year: 2010
Award Start Date (Proposal Award Date): 2010-01-29
Award End Date (Contract End Date): 2010-07-29
Small Business Information
5 Hillside Road
Carlisle, MA 01741-1116
United States
DUNS: 828369848
HUBZone Owned: No
Woman Owned: No
Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: No
Principal Investigator
 Samuel MacMullan
 Principal Investigator
 (978) 371-0484
 sam.macmullan@orbanalytics.com
Business Contact
 Samuel MacMullan
Title: Business Official
Phone: (978) 371-0484
Email: sam.macmullan@orbanalytics.com
Research Institution
N/A
Abstract

Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK) is a CCSDS standard scheme for space missions requiring very bandwidth efficient communications using transceivers with strict size, weight, and power restrictions. GMSK provides a constant envelope signal that passes unaltered through system nonlinearities, allowing efficient power amplifier operation without extensive filtering and predistortion. Unfortunately, current off-the-shelf GMSK and related continuous phase modulation (CPM) receivers (e.g., multi-h CPM) operate far from predicted theoretical performance and suffer from frequent link dropouts. CPM performance issues are mostly attributable to a failure to adequately model and mitigate against transmitter, channel, and receiver impairments, including fixed-point processing effects, and to generate reliable soft-decision information for decoding. To maximize performance given CCSDS turbo or LDPC coding and eliminate communications dropouts, a soft-decision generating GMSK demodulator with carefully designed impairment estimation and compensation is proposed.

* Information listed above is at the time of submission. *

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