Performance Evaluation of a Tactical Data-Link System Based on MSK and 16QAM

Abstract

Tactical data links are becoming more widely used in the military, as they can greatly improve the efficiency of various combat units. Such tactical data links must be able to transmit large volumes of data at high speed in complex communication environments while ensuring reliability. This paper studies the influence of 16-ary Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (16QAM) and Minimum Frequency-shift Keying(MSK) modulation on the transmission performance of data chain system. The simulation results show that 16QAM modulation can meet the requirements of tactical data link system for BER and data transmission rate, and the technical complexity is in the middle; the system BER of MSK modulation is lower, and a large number of data transmission can be realized at high speed. When the SNR reaches 50dB, the BER of MSK modulation can be reduced to $10^{-4}$ order of magnitude, which is better than Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) modulation, that is, the data chain system based on MSK modulation can meet the transmission requirements of data chain when the signal-to-noise ratio is large.

Keywords

• Tactical Data-Link
• OFDM
• OCML
• MSK
• 16QAM