Influence of imperfect carrier recovery on satellite QPSK communication system performance

The purpose of this paper is to provide the theoretical approach for determining the bit error probability in detecting a coherent quaternary phase-shift-keyed signal transmitted over a soft-limited channel in the presence of the uplink and downlink noise, as well as the noisy carrier reference signal. The uplink noise is considered in the specific way through the envelope variations and the frequency offset of the signal remitted by the satellite station having influence on the variations of the phase-locked loop parameters in the receiving ground station, consequently on the probability density function of the phase error, i.e. the average bit error probability. The downlink noise is also taken into consideration. The determined results are based on the non-linear phase-locked loop model with primary emphasis on the degradations in the system performance produced by the imperfect carrier signal extraction.