What's the rationale behind this pulse shaping function?

Question

Section 13.2 of the HD Radio standard for AM defines a pulse shaping function that appears to be some strange variant on a raised cosine filter:

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More specifically, H(ξ) is a raised cosine filter with total width (1+α)T, and W(ξ) appears to be a "stretched" version. Why do they do this?

JP Sugarbroad · Accepted Answer · 2021-11-17T00:33:45.953

3

The pulse envelope is convolved with a Gaussian function to soften the transition between the symbols. If the standard pulse envelope were used without any softening, it would be audible to an AM detector (it runs at ~172 Hz).

Source: Chapter 8 of The IBOC Handbook: Understanding HD Radio (TM) Technology by David P. Maxson

edited Nov 17 '21 at 00:33

answered Sep 17 '13 at 21:28

JP Sugarbroad

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7

Any chance of a page reference? :-) – Peter K. Sep 18 '13 at 21:24
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Chapter 8 is the best I can do. I was using the Google Books preview. :-) – JP Sugarbroad Sep 19 '13 at 04:53

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 17 '13 at 02:36

It may be to constrain a symbol within the period to mitigate ISI. There may be other properties that become apparent in practical application over more traditional tapers. It could be the result of research combined with analysis of real world data.

Given the paper doesn't cite any source, you may have to do some more research on pulse-shaping and OFDM in scholarly publications. Maybe there's a paper out there that has more information or a comparison of windowing functions.

What's the rationale behind this pulse shaping function?

2 Answers2