Expurgated PPM Using Symmetric Balanced Incomplete Block Designs

TL;DR

This paper introduces expurgated PPM (EPPM), a novel modulation scheme using symmetric BIBD for peak power limited systems, enhancing constellation size, bit-rate, and simplifying receiver design.

Contribution

The paper proposes a new EPPM scheme based on symmetric BIBD, improving performance and receiver simplicity over existing PPM methods in peak power limited communications.

Findings

EPPM outperforms existing Q-ary PPM schemes in performance.

EPPM allows larger constellation sizes and higher bit-rates.

The cyclic nature of EPPM simplifies receiver design.

Abstract

In this letter, we propose a new pulse position modulation (PPM) scheme, called expurgated PPM (EPPM), for application in peak power limited communication systems, such as impulse radio (IR) ultra wide band (UWB) systems and free space optical (FSO) communications. Using the proposed scheme, the constellation size and the bit-rate can be increased significantly in these systems. The symbols are obtained using symmetric balanced incomplete block designs (BIBD), forming a set of pair-wise equidistance symbols. The performance of Q-ary EPPM is better than any Q-ary pulse position-based modulation scheme with the same symbol length. Since the code is cyclic, the receiver for EPPM is simpler compared to multipulse PPM (MPPM).