PULSE AMPLITUDE MODULATION (PAM)

Introduction:

The amplitude of the pulse carrier is changed in proportion with the instantaneous amplitude of
the modulating signal.

Depending upon the shape of the PAM pulse, it is mainly classified as,

i. Natural PAM and

ii. Flat top PAM.

The flat top pulses have constant amplitude within the pulse interval.

Why flat top PAM is widely used?

i. During the transmission, the noise interferes with the flat top of the transmitted pulses
and this noise can be easily removed.
ii. In natural samples PAM, the pulse has varying top in accordance with the signal
variation. When such type of pulse is received by the receiver, it always seems to be
contaminated by the noise. Then, it becomes quite difficult to determine the shape of the
top of the pulse and therefore amplitude detection of those pulses is not exact. As a result
of this, errors are introduced in the received signal.
iii. The electronic circuitry needed to perform natural sampling is somewhat complicated
because the pulse top shape is to be maintained. These complications are reduced by flat-
top PAM.

Natural PAM:

1. Generation of Natural PAM:

✓ The modulating signal X(t) is passed through a Low Pass Filter(LPF) which will band
limit this signal to fm. That means all the frequency components higher than the
frequency fm are removed. Band limiting is necessary to avoid the “aliasing” effect in the
sampling process.
✓ The pulse train generator generates a periodic train of carrier pulses unit amplitude (1V)
and a period of “Ts” seconds, which satisfies the Nyquist criterion of fs > 2 fm. This is
nothing but the sampling signal S(t).
✓ The both band limited modulating signal X(t) and the sampling signal S(t) are given as
inputs to the multiplier, where the uniform sampling takes place to generate the PAM
signal as sampled signal.
✓ In the PAM signal, information in the modulating signal is contained in the “amplitude
variations” of the pulsed carrier.
2. Detection of Natural PAM:
✓ From the PAM signal the original signal can be detected by passing it through a Low
Pass Filter (LPF), which is tuned to message signal frequency ’fm’. So, all high frequency
ripples is removed and the original modulating signal is recovered back.

Flat Top PAM:

✓ The natural sampling is rarely employed in practice. Instead the other practical sampling
technique flat top sampling is employed in practice.
✓ Here, the message signal X(t) is sampled instantaneous at the rate fs = 1/Ts, and the
duration of each sample is lengthened to a duration ”r”.
1. Generation of Flat Top PAM:
✓ A sample and hold circuit is used to produce flat top sampled PAM. This consists of the
two field effect transistors (FET) switches and a capacitor.
✓ Flat top PAM signals are generated by applying the input modulating signal X(t) to
charging (sampling) switch G1. At the sampling instant, sampling switch is closed for a
short duration by a short pulse applied to a gate G1 of the transistor.
✓ During this period, the capacitor “C” quickly charged up to a voltage equal to the
instantaneous sample value of the incoming signal X(t). Now, the sampling switch is
opened and the capacitor ‘C’ holds the charge.
✓ The sampling switch is then turned off. Both the FETs will remain OFF for the duration
of ‘r’ seconds and the capacitor will hold the voltage across it constant for this period.
Thus the pulse is stretched to ‘r’ seconds.
✓ At the end of the pulse interval (r), the discharge switch is then closed by a pulse applied
to gate G2. Due to this, the capacitor “C” is discharged to zero volts. The discharges
switch is then opened and thus capacitor has no voltage. The output voltage then reduces
to zero.
 Aperture Effect:

During flat top sampling, to convert varying amplitudes of pulses to flat top pulses we use a
“sinc function”. Because of this, there would be decrease in amplitude. This is named as
Aperture Effect.

2. Detection of Flat Top PAM:

✓ Detector contains a low-pass reconstruction filter with cut off frequency, which is slightly
higher than the maximum frequency ‘fm’ present in the message signal X(t).
✓ The equalizer compensates both the aperture effect as well as attenuation by a Low Pass
Filter. Finally, the output of PAM detector is original message.

Transmission Bandwidth of PAM signal:

If the ON and OFF time of the pulse amplitude modulated (PAM) pulse is same, then maximum
frequency of the PAM pulse will be, fmax = 1/ τ + τ = 1/2 τ.

The bandwidth required for the transmission of a PAM signal would be equal to the maximum
frequency fmax. Then the transmission bandwidth will be,

BW ≥ fmax

≥ 1/2 τ

But, τ << 1/2fm

BW ≥ 1/2 τ >> fm (or) BW >> fm

Transmission bandwidth of PAM: BW >> fm.

Thus, the transmission bandwidth of PAM signal is very very large compared to highest
frequency in the signal X(t).

Advantages and Disadvantages of PAM:

Advantages:

i. Simple circuit used for both generation and detection.

Disadvantages:

i. The effect of additive noise is high in PAM. Since the amplitude of PAM pulses is varied
in accordance with the amplitude of modulating signal. Therefore, the interference of the
noise is maximum in a PAM signal. This noise cannot be removed easily.
ii. The transmission bandwidth required is too large.
iii. The transmission power is not constant due to the changes in amplitude of PAM pulses.
PULSE TIME MODULATION (PTM):

In pulse time modulation, amplitude of pulse is held constant, whereas position of pulse or wide
of pulse is made proportional to the amplitude of the signal at the sampling instant.

In PTM, the timing of the pulses of the carrier pulse train is varied and the two types of PTM are:

i. Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) (or) Pulse Duration Modulation (PDM) (or) Pulse
Length Modulation (PLM), and
ii. Pulse Position Modulation (PPM)

PULSE WIDTH MODULATION (PWM):

Introduction:

The width of the carrier pulses varies in proportion with the amplitude of modulating signal at
the sampling instant.

✓ The amplitude and frequency of the PWM wave remains constant. Only the width
changes. The information is contained in the variation of the carrier pulse.
✓ The additive noise, changes the amplitude of the PWM signal. Using the limiter circuit at
the receiver, unwanted amplitude variations are easily removed.
✓ Amplitude variations due to the noise do not affect the performance. Thus PWM is more
immune to noise than PAM.
PWM Signal Generation:

✓ A saw tooth signal acts as a sampling signal which is applied to inverting terminal of a
comparator.
✓ The comparator output will remain high as long as amplitude of X(t) is higher than that of
the saw tooth signal. This gives a PWM signal.

PWM Signal Detection:

Working Operations:

✓ The PWM signal (A) received at the input of the detection circuit contains the noise and
applied to pulse generator which regenerates the PWM signal (B) and removes noise.
✓ The regenerated pulses (B) are applied to a reference pulse generator and it produces
reference pulses (D) with constant amplitude and pulse width. These pulses are delayed
by specific amount of delay.
✓ The regenerated PWM pulses are also applied to a ramp generator. It produces ramp
signal (C) for the duration of PWM pulses and the height of ramps are proportional to the
widths of PWM pulses.
✓ The maximum ramp voltage is retained till the next pulse. The delayed reference pulses
and the output of ramp generator is added with the help of adder.
✓ The output of the adder is then clipped off at a threshold level to generate PAM signal at
the output of the clipper. A low pass filter is used to recover the original modulating
signal from PAM signal.

✓ Transmission Bandwidth of PWM and PPM

BW ≥ 1/2tr
where tr is the rise time of pulses.
Advantages and Disadvantages of PWM:

Advantages:

i. In PWM noise is less because here amplitude is constant.

ii. No synchronization required between transmitter and the receiver.
iii. It is easy to separate the signal from noise (which is not possible in PAM).

Disadvantages:

i. Variable pulse width causes variable power contents. So transmission must be powerful
enough to handle the maximum width.
ii. Bandwidth requirement is higher than PAM.

PULSE POSITION MODULATION (PPM):

The amplitude and width of the pulses are kept constant but the position of each pulse is varied
in accordance with the amplitude of the sampled values of the modulating signal.

PPM Signal Generation:

✓ To generate pulse position modulation, the PWM pulses obtained at the output of the
comparator are used as the trigger input to a monostable multivibrator.
✓ The monostable is triggered on negative (falling) edge of PWM. The output of
monostable goes high. This voltage remains high for the fixed period then goe low.
✓ As a result of shifting the trailing edges of PWM signal in proportion with the modulating
signal X(t), the PPM pulses also result in keep shifting.
PPM Signal Demodulation:

Working Operation:

✓ The received PPM signal is noise corrupted. The pulse generator removes the noise and
develops a pulsed waveform at its output of fixed duration and applies these pulses to
reset the pin (R) of a SR flip-flop.
✓ A fixed period reference pulse is generated from the incoming PPM at reference pulse
generator, which is applied to the set pins (S) of the SR flip flop.
✓ Due to the set and reset signals applied to the SR flip flop, a PWM signal is obtained in
the output which can be demodulated with a PWM demodulator to recover original
modulating signal.

Advantages and Disadvantages of PPM:

Advantages:

i. Due to constant amplitude of pulses, the transmitted power always remains constant.
ii. Less noise interference.
iii. It is easy to reconstruct PPM signal from the noise contaminated PPM signal.

Disadvantages:

i. Synchronization required between the transmitter and receiver.

ii. Large bandwidth requirement as compared to PAM.
COMPARISON OF PAM, PWM AND PPM SYSTEMS:

S.No. Parameter PAM PWM PPM

1. Variable Amplitude Width Position
characteristic of
the pulsed carrier
2. Bandwidth Bandwidth of the Bandwidth of the Bandwidth of the
Requirement transmission channel transmission channel transmission channel
depends on the width depends on rise time depends on rise time of
of the pulse. of the PWM pulse the PPM pulse.
BW ≥ 1/2 τ BW ≥ 1/2tr BW ≥ 1/2 tr
3. Noise Maximum Minimum Minimum
Interference
4. Information is Amplitude variations Width variations Position variations
contained in.
5. Necessary of Not necessary Not necessary Necessary
synchronization
pulses
6. Complexity in Complex Simple Simple
generation and
detection
7. Transmitter Varies with the Varies with variation Constant
power amplitude of pulses in width
8. Similarity with AM FM PM
other modulation
system
9. Types of carrier Train of pulses Train of pulses Train of pulses
10. Output
Waveform
PULSE CODE MODULATION (PCM)

Introduction:

✓ The simplest form of pulse digital modulation is called as pulse code modulation (PCM).
✓ In PCM system, the message signal is first sampled and then amplitude of each sample is
rounded off to the nearest one of a finite set of allowable values known as “Quantization”
levels, so that both time and amplitude are in the discrete form. Finally, these quantized
amplitudes are transmitted in the form of “code words”.
✓ PCM is essentially an analog to digital conversion (ADC) process, where the information
contained in the instantaneous sample of analog signal are represented by digital codes
are represented by digital codes and are transmitted as a serial bit stream.

PCM System:

✓ A pulse code modulation system includes the following basic elements.

i. Transmitter
ii. Transmission path
iii. Receiver

✓ The transmitter converts the message signal X(t) into a series of coded pulses and sends it
over the communication channel. This transmitter is also called as encoder.
✓ The receiver performs exactly in the reverse way as compared to the transmitter. It will
convert the received encoded PCM pulses back into the message signal.

PCM Transmitter:
 ✓ The basic operations performed in the transmitter of a PCM system are sampling,
quantizing and encoding.
✓ The quantizing and encoding operations are usually performed in the same circuit which
is called as an Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC).
a) Low Pass Filter (LPF):
The low pass filter is used to prevent aliasing effect of the message signal by attenuate
the frequencies greater than fm Hz, which is the maximum frequency of the message
signal. So that, a proper sampling rate can be obtained at PCM transmitter.
b) Sampler:
A train of narrow rectangular pulses are used as sampling signal to sample the message
signal. To ensure perfect reconstruction of the message signal at the receiver, the
sampling frequency fs must be greater than twice the highest frequency component of the
message signal fm in accordance with the sampling theorem.
fs ≥ 2 fm

c) Quantizer:
The process of making the signal discrete in amplitude by approximating the sampled
signal to the nearest predefined (or) representation level is called as quantization.
d) Encoder:
The function of the encoder is to encode the discrete set of samples. The process of
allocating some digital code to each representation level is called encoding. The obtained
codes are transmitted as a bit stream.

PCM Transmission Path

✓ The PCM transmission path is referred as “the path between PCM transmitter and the
PCM receiver over which the PCM signal is travelled”.
✓ The regenerative repeater circuit of the PCM system reshapes the pulse by removing the
noise and we get a clean PCM signal without any trace of noise.
 ✓ The number of required repeaters is based on the distance between PCM transmitter and
receiver.

Repeaters:

✓ The three basic operations performed by regenerated repeaters are,

i. Equalization
ii. Timing
iii. Decision making
✓ The equalizer shapes the received pulses so as to compensate for the effects of amplitude
and phase distortions produced by non-ideal transmission characteristics of the channel.

✓ The timing circuitry provides a periodic pulse train which is derived from the received
pulses, for sampling the equalized pulses at the instants of time where the signal-to-noise
ratio is a maximum.
✓ The decision device makes a decision about whether the equalized PCM wave at its input
has a 0 value (or) 1 value at the instant of sampling. Such a decision is made by
comparing the equalized PCM with a reference level called decision threshold.
✓ At the output of the decision device, we get a clean PCM signal without any trace of
noise.

PCM Receiver:
 ✓ The noise removed reshaped PCM pulses from the output of the regeneration circuit are
applied to decoder. The decoder output is a sequence of quantized pulses from code
words.
✓ A sampled and hold circuit in the detector can be used to convert the digitized word into
its analog value.
✓ Message signal is recovered by passing the decoder output through a low-pass
reconstruction filter whose cutoff frequency is equal to the message bandwidth fm.

Quantization Error (or) Quantization Noise

✓ The difference between the instantaneous values of the quantized signal and input signal
is called as Quantization error (or) Quantization noise.
= xq(t) – x(t).
✓ This error should be as small as possible. To minimize the quantization error we need to
reduce the step size‘s’ by increasing the number of quantization levels Q.

Signal to Quantization Noise Ratio (SNRQ)

✓ This is the figure of merit for the PCM systems. Maximum signal to quantization noise
ratio for a PCM system with a sinusoidal input is given by
SNRq = (1.8 + 6N) dB
✓ Maximum signal to quantization noise ratio for a PCM system with a non-sinusoidal
input is given by,
SNRq = (4.8 + 6N) dB
✓ This equation shows that the signal to quantization noise is solely dependent on the
number of bits per word. i.e., N.
✓ This ratio should be as high as possible, which can be achieved by increasing N. But this
increases the bit rate and bandwidth of the PCM system. Therefore, the number of bits
per word is a compromise between high SNRq and bandwidth requirements.

Advantages, Disadvantages and Applications of PCM

Advantages of PCM:

✓ The PCM is a very popular technique because of the many advantages over other digital
techniques. They are,
i. PCM systems have very high noise immunity compared to other digital
techniques.
ii. In long distance digital telephone systems, the PCM technique uses repeaters,
which regenerates a clean PCM waveform at the output by removing the
distortion and noise.
iii. Due to the digital nature of PCM signal, it can be easily stored.
iv. Multiplexing of various PCM signals is easily possible.
 v. Relatively inexpensive digital circuitry which can be used extensively in the
system.
vi. The probability of error for the system output can be reduced even further.
vii. It is possible to use various coding techniques, so that only the desired person can
decode the received signal.

Disadvantages of PCM:

i. Due to encoding, decoding and circuitry, the PCM systems are complex.
ii. PCM requires large bandwidth because of digital coding of analog pulses.

Applications:

i. In long distance digital telephone systems.

ii. In space communication, space craft transmits signals to earth. Here the
transmitted power is very low (10 to 15W) and the distances are huge (a few
million km). Still due to the high noise immunity, only PCM systems can be used
in such applications.

COMPARISON BETWEEN PAM, PWM, PPM AND PCM

S.No PAM PWM PPM PCM

.
1. Analog pulse Analog pulse Analog pulse Digital pulse
modulation modulation modulation modulation
2. The amplitude of the The width of the The amplitude and PCM is essentially an
pulse carrier is modulated pulses width of the pulses analog to digital
changed in proportion varies in proportion are kept constant but conversion process,
with the instantaneous with the amplitude of the position of each where the information
amplitude of the the modulating pulse is varied in contained in the
modulating signal. signal. accordance with the instantaneous sample
amplitude of the of analog signal are
sampled values of the represented by digital
modulating signal. codes and are
transmitted as a serial
bit stream.
3. Information is Information is Information is Information is
transmitted in the form transmitted in the transmitted in the transmitted in the form
of pulse signal. form of pulse signal form of pulse signal of code words
4. Noise interference is Noise interference is Noise interference is Noise interference is
maximum minimum minimum minimum
5. Generation and Generation and Generation and Generation and
detection circuits are detection circuits are detection circuits are detection circuits are
complex due to natural simple simple complex due to
sampling encoding, decoding
and quantization
 circuits
6. Information is Information is Information is Information is
contained in amplitude contained in the contained in the contained in the
variation of pulse width variation of position variation of transmitted code
signal pulse signal pulse signal words.
7. Bandwidth of the Bandwidth of the Bandwidth of the Bandwidth of the
transmission channel transmission channel transmission channel transmission is 1/2Nfs,
depends on width of depends on the rise of depends on the rise of where N is the number
the pulse. the pulse. the pulse. of bits used for
BW ≥ ½s BW ≥ 1/2tr BW ≥ 1/2tr encoding and fs is
is the width of the tr - rise time of the tr - rise time of the sampling frequency.
pulse pulse pulse
8. Used in Used in generating Synchronous Used to digitize the
instrumentation PPM and DC motor communication of analog voice and
systems. speed control analog pulse over video, also used in
short distance voice mail, CD, laser
disk and widely used
in radio control