Viterbi and Serial Demodulators for Pre-coded Binary Gmsk

Three different demodulators applicable to the coherent demodulation of binary Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK) signal are described and their performance compared. These include a near-optimal trellis demodulator, which utilizes two matched filters and Viterbi algorithm to carry out maximum likelihood sequence estimation, and a singlefilter threshold demodulator with and without pulse equalization. The performance of these demodulators in noise and adjacent channel interference (ACI) are compared for several signal BT products. The equalized threshold demodulator is shown to perform nearly as well as the near-optimal trellis demodulator in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN), and substantially outperform the trellis demodulator under severe ACI condition.