Abstract: An improved AGC subsystem for preferred use in quadrature amplitude modulation receivers offers improved automatic gain control of received signals in fading channels by generating an error signal only from constellation signal points having large signal-to-noise ratios for increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the gain control error signal for lowering dispersion of symbol signals in the constellation signal space for improving data detection of symbol signals with the improved performance with as much as one dB in the signal-to-noise ratio.

Abstract: A receiver generates log-likelihood-ratio-based soft bit metrics of precoded quaternary continuous phase modulation signals using four state-constrained trellises and a streamlined maximum likelihood sequence estimation Viterbi algorithm requiring no survivor state storage elements for a preferred error correction-coded quaternary Gaussian minimum shift keying communication system employing reduced-complexity pulse-amplitude modulation matched-filtering and soft-decision decoding.