Frequency packing and multiuser detection for CPMs: how to improve the spectral efficiency of DVB-RCS2 systems

We consider a frequency division multiplexed system where each user adopts a continuous phase modulation (CPM) and multiuser detection is employed at the receiver side. The spectral efficiency (SE) is used as a performance measure to compare, from an information-theoretic point of view, different modulation formats. More precisely, we consider the new CPM formats recently included in the DVB-RCS2 standard. We describe a framework for computing the information rate (IR) and the SE of such systems, and use it for optimizing the channel spacing between adjacent users and the CPM phase response. Our analysis reveals that modulation formats adopted in the DVB-RCS2 standard are suboptimal in terms of SE, while if we allow multiuser detection excellent performance can be achieved by using simple binary formats and highly frequency packed signals. Furthermore, we consider practical schemes, where CPMs are serially concatenated with an outer code, and a low-complexity multiuser receiver is employed, showing that the theoretical limits predicted by the IR analysis can be approached.