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Repeatedly overlaying a time width of four symbols yields an eye diagram.
Repeatedly overlaying a time width of four symbols yields an eye diagram .

Four is an interesting grouping size for this particular problem because four symbols are used to represent each characterin the coding and decoding implemented in letters2pam.m and pam2letters.m . One idiosyncrasy is that each character starts offwith a negative symbol. Another is that the second symbol in each character is never - 1 in our chosen message. These are not generic effects; they are a consequence of theparticular coding and message used in idsys.m . Had we chosen to implement a scrambling scheme(recall Exercise  [link] ) the received signal would be whitened andthese particular peculiarities would not occur.

The vector z contains estimates of the decoded symbols, and the command plot([1:length(z)],z,'.') produces a time history of the output of the downsampler, as shown in [link] . This is called the time history of a constellation diagram in which all the dots are meant to lie near the allowable symbol values. Indeed,the points in [link] cluster tightly about the alphabet values ± 1 and ± 3 . How tightly they cluster can be quantified using the cluster variance , which is the average of the square of the difference betweenthe decoded symbol values (the soft decisions) in z and the nearest member of the alphabet (the final hard decisions).

The M atlab function quantalph.m is used in idsys.m to calculate the hard decisions, which are then converted back into a text character string using pam2letters.m . If all goes well, this reproduces the original message.The only flaw is that the last symbol of the message has been lost due to the inherent delay of thelowpass filtering and the pulse shape correlation. Because four symbols are needed to decode a single character,the loss of the last symbol also results in the loss of the last character. The function pam2letters.m provides a friendly reminder in the M atlab command window that this has happened.

Values of the reconstructed symbols, called the soft decisions, are plotted in this constellation diagram time history.
Values of the reconstructed symbols, called the soft decisions , are plotted in this constellation diagram time history.

The problems that follow give a few more ways to explore the behavior of the ideal system.

Using idsys.m , examine the effect of using different carrier frequencies. Try fc= 50, 30, 3, 1, 0.5. What are the limiting factors that cause some towork and others to fail?

Using idsys.m , examine the effect of using different oversampling frequencies. Try M= 1000, 25, 10. What are the limiting factors that cause some towork and others to fail?

What happens if the LPF at the beginning of the receiver is removed? What do you think will happen if there areother users present? Try adding in “another user” at fc = 30 .

What are the limits to the LPF design at the beginning of the receiver? What is the lowest cutoff frequency that works? The highest?

Using the same specifications ( fbe=[0 0.1 0.2 1]; damps= [1 10 0 ]; ), how short can you make the LPF? Explain.

Flat fading: a simple impairment and a simple fix

Unfortunately, a number of the assumptions made in the simulation of the ideal system idsys.m are routinely violated in practice. The designer of a receiver must somehow compensateby improving the receiver. This section presents an impairment (flat fading) for which we havealready developed a fix (an AGC). Later sections describe misbehavior due to a wider variety ofcommon impairments that we will spend the rest of the book combating.

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Source:  OpenStax, Software receiver design. OpenStax CNX. Aug 13, 2013 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11510/1.3
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