Circuit recovering the carrier of a signal amplitude and phase modulated by digital signals

An apparatus for recovery of a carrier of a signal herein referred to as recovered carrier, amplitude-modulated and phase modulated by digital signals referred to herein as modulating signal in a coherent demodulation system which reconstructs base-band components of said modulating signal, said base-band components of said modulating signal being apt to be represented by modulus and sign on a Cartesian plane (signal plane), and forming a geometric representation of said received signal, characterized in that a phase-error estimate of said recovered carrier is effected by making a comparison between position of said received signal in a signal plane and a plurality of decision thresholds duly positioned in said signal plane;

• said comparison being effected at a decision instant usually used to estimate transmitted digital symbols;
• said decision thresholds subdividing the signal plane into three classes of regions, a first class comprising points where said received signal can be found when there is a positive-sign phase error in said recovered carrier, a second class comprising points where said received signal can be found when there is a negative-sign phase-error in said recovered carrier, a third class comprising points where said received signal can be found when no phase error exists in said recovered carrier;
• said first and second classes comprising a pre-determined number of regions in relation with the magnitude of said phase error of said recovered carrier;
• the inclusion in one of said classes and regions being univocally denoted by a digital symbol which is utilized to generate a control signal for a local oscillator which comprises:
• a first and a second multiplier, each receiving as one input the modulated signal, the outputs of the multipliers being in phase quadratures;
• a pair of low-pass filters respectively connected to said outputs of multipliers;
• a sample and decision circuit receiving outputs from said filters having controllable thresholds for comparing at a selected instant, amplitudes of baseband components from said filters and producing an output;
• a first logic circuit coupled to said sample and decision circuit for estimating positioning errors of said thresholds with respect to an ideal position on the basis of the digital symbol output by said sample and decision circuit, a first pulse generator connected to and controlled by said first logic circuit, and another low-pass filter connected between said first pulse generator and said sample and decision circuit for applying said adjustment signal thereto;
• a second logic circuit connected to said output of said sample and decision circuit for receiving a digital symbol output by said sample and decision circuit and representing the phase error of the received carrier;
• a second pulse generator connected and controlled by said second logic circuit for generating a correction pulse;
• a further low-pass filter connected to said second pulse generator and filtering a sequence of correction pulses received therefrom;
• a voltage-controlled oscillator having as an output said recovered carrier which is applied as first multiplier signal to said second multiplier;
• a phase shifter connected between said output of said voltage-controlled oscillator and said first multiplier for feeding a second multiplier signal to said first multiplier which is in a phase quadrature with said first multiplier signal;
• and
• a symbol synchronism-recovery circuit for triggering said sample and decision circuit at said instant.