DISTORTION-COMPENSATED DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVER AND METHOD THEREFOR

摘要

A digital communication transmitter (30) implements a phase constellation (40) which defines a digital communication signal stream that is subsequently compressed (50), thereby introducing distortion into a communication signal (56) transmitted to a complementary receiver (30). The receiver (30) includes a magnitude adjuster (80) which increases the magnitude component of selected phase estimates to at least partially compensate for the compression distortion. The receiver also includes a branch metrics generator (90) having a segment (138) in which branch metric transfer function peaks and valleys are not positioned in receiver phase space to coincide with ideal phase points. The branch metric transfer functions are generated in accordance with a process (102) which bases branch metric calculations upon empirically determined probabilities that characterize system-induced distortions.