Pulse-position Modulation - Non-coherent Detection

Non-coherent Detection

One of the principal advantages of PPM is that it is an M-ary modulation technique that can be implemented non-coherently, such that the receiver does not need to use a phase-locked loop (PLL) to track the phase of the carrier. This makes it a suitable candidate for optical communications systems, where coherent phase modulation and detection are difficult and extremely expensive. The only other common M-ary non-coherent modulation technique is M-ary Frequency Shift Keying (M-FSK), which is the frequency-domain dual to PPM.