ECE 412a: WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

Module 6
DIGITAL SIGNALING FOR FADING CHANNELS

Structure of a wireless communication link, Principles of Offset-QPSK, p/4-DQPSK,

Minimum Shift Keying, Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying, Error performance in fading

channels, OFDM principle – Cyclic prefix, Windowing, PAPR.

Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this lesson, the learner should be able to:
a.To know the various digital signaling techniques and multipath mitigation
techniques .

Contents:
Wireless Communication is a method of transmitting information from one
point to other, without using any connection like wires, cables or any physical
medium. Generally, in a communication system, information is transmitted
from transmitter to receiver that are placed over a limited distance.

Structure of a Wireless Communication Link

The structure of wireless communication link in Wireless operations permit services

like long-range communications which are impossible or impractical to implement
with the wires usage in communication. This term is commonly used in the
telecommunication industry in reference to telecommunications systems like (e.g. are
radio transmitters and receivers and remote controls etc.) which use some form of
the energy like (e.g. are radio waves and the acoustic energy, etc.) which is used to
transfer information without the usage of wires.The information is then transferred in
this manner over both short and long distances.

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Transceiver block diagram structure

Each of the gigabit transceiver block has a clock multiplier unit CMU which provides
clocking flexibility and supports a range of incoming data streams. In each CMU two
transmitter phase-locked loops that is PLLs which generates the required clock
frequencies that is based upon the synthesis of an input reference clock.In each
transmitter PLL supports all multiplication factors to allow the use of various input
clock frequencies during transmission. Both of the transmitter’s PLLs are identical for
which they support data ranges from 600 Mbps to 6.375 Gbps data transfer. But
however each PLL is configured to support different data rates where each
transmitter PLL drives four channels. During PIPE x8 mode the transmitter PLL of the
master transceiver block drives upto eight channels where CMU block is active both
in single- and double-width modes and is powered off when not in use.

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The Simplified models of wireless communication links

This is often preferable to have simplified models for wireless communication links.
Moreover the analog radio channels with the downconverters ,upconverters, RF
elements and noise interfere the signals and it is then added to time discreet low
pass channel during transmission.The other simplified models use a digital
representation of the channel suitable for the analysis of the coding scheme.

The Modulation formats

The most simple modulation is binary modulation where +1 bit value is mapped to
one specific wave form while a -1 bit value is mapped to a different wave form.
During choosing of a modulation wave format in wireless system the ultimate goal is
to transmit with certain energy as much as information can transmit over a channel.

is an example for a cosine wave

Structure of a Demodulator

The Single Chip QAM Demodulator with low Implemenation Loss is a:-

– Double Loop AGC for optimum usage of the A/D Converter

– The delay in half Nyquist filter and equaliser require double carrier recovery loop
structure to achieve high performance on phase noise & microphonics

– The adaptive equaliser LE/MSE or * LE/ZF preferred for QAM with M£64*
DFE/MSE required for QAM with M>64.

Offset QPSK, which involves adding a delay to one of two digital data streams
used in the modulation process, reduces the maximum phase jump to 90°.

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Another option is π/4-QPSK, which reduces the maximum phase jump to
135°.

Pi4 variant of QPSK uses two identical constellations which are rotated by 45°
( radians, hence the name) with respect to one another. Usually, either the even or
odd symbols are used to select points from one of the constellations and the other
symbols select points from the other constellation. This also reduces the phase-shifts
from a maximum of 180°, but only to a maximum of 135° and so the amplitude
fluctuations of -QPSK are between OQPSK and non-offset QPSK.
One property this modulation scheme possesses is that if the modulated signal is
represented in the complex domain, transitions between symbols never pass through
0. In other words, the signal does not pass through the origin. This lowers the
dynamical range of fluctuations in the signal which is desirable when engineering
communications signals.
On the other hand, -QPSK lends itself to easy demodulation and has been adopted
for use in, for example, TDMA cellular telephone systems.
The modulated signal is shown below for a short segment of a random binary data-
stream. The construction is the same as above for ordinary QPSK. Successive
symbols are taken from the two constellations shown in the diagram. Thus, the first
symbol (1 1) is taken from the "blue" constellation and the second symbol (0 0) is
taken from the "green" constellation. Note that magnitudes of the two component
waves change as they switch between constellations, but the total signal's magnitude
remains constant (constant envelope). The phase-shifts are between those of the two
previous timing-diagrams.

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https://slideplayer.com/slide/8634628/

Minimum Shift Keying

In Minimum-shift keying, bits are separated in even and odd bits and each
bit's duration is doubled. After that, frequency is separated into two types of
frequencies f1 and f2. Here, f1 determines/denotes the low frequency, and f2
denotes the high frequency.

Minimum Shift Key Modulation is another type of digital modulation technique used
to convert a digital signal into analog signals. It is also called Minimum-shift
keying (MSK) or Advance Frequency Shift Keying because it is a type of
continuous-phase frequency-shift keying.

Key features of Minimum Shift Key Modulation or Minimum-shift keying (MSK)

o Minimum-shift keying or MSK was first developed by the Collins Radio
employees Melvin L. Doelz and Earl T. Heald in the late 1950s.
o It is encoded with bits alternating between quadrature components, with the Q
component delayed by half the symbol period.
o Minimum Shift Keying is the most effective digital modulation technique. It can
be implemented for almost every stream of bits much easier than the Phase
Shift Key, Frequency Shift Key and Amplitude Shift Key of digital modulation
technique.
o The Minimum Shift Keying's concept is based on the positioning of bits such
as even bits and odd bits for the given bitstream and the bit positioning
frequency generating table.

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 o MSK is the most widely used digital modulation technology because of its
ability and flexibility to handle "One(1)" and "Zero(0)" transition of binary bits.

Working of Minimum-shift keying (MSK)

o In Minimum-shift keying, bits are separated in even and odd bits and each
bit's duration is doubled.
o After that, frequency is separated into two types of frequencies f1 and f2.
Here, f1 determines/denotes the low frequency, and f2 denotes the high
frequency.
o Original or inverted signals are chosen from the frequency generating table
according to the bit values if they are even or odd.
o The curve for higher frequency takes a complete wave from 0 to π, and the
curve for low frequency takes a wave 0 to π/2 within the same interval of time.

Let's take an example to demonstrate the working of Minimum-shift keying and draw
a curve for a given bit stream. Let's consider a bit stream 1011010. Here, we have to
find the MSK curve for this bit stream.

Rules for drawing MSK Curve

Step 1: First, draw the curve according to the bit value of amplitude. If the bit is zero,
it would have amplitude while is the bit is zero, it does not have amplitude.

HTML Tutorial

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Step 2: Now, start with the odd bit. If the bit's value is one, draw the curve above the
x-axis twice as long as the original one. If the bit's value is zero, draw the curve below
the x-axis twice as long as the original size.

Step 3: Now, draw the curve for high and low frequency, as shown in the following
graph. It would remain the same for any problem.

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Step 4: This is the final step. Now, draw the final curve according to the frequency
generating table. In the following diagram, the blue colored curve represents the final
obtained MSK curve.

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Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK)

Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying or GMSK is very much similar to standard minimum-
shift keying (MSK), but the digital data stream is first shaped with a Gaussian filter
before it is applied to a frequency modulator.

The GMSK form of modulation is based on frequency shift keying that has no phase
discontinuities. It provides efficient use of the spectrum as well as enabling high-
efficiency radio power amplifiers.

It has much narrower phase shift angles than most MSK modulation systems.

Usage of Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK)

GMSK is mainly used in the following technologies:

o Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM)

o Bluetooth
o Satellite Communications
o Automatic Identification System (AIS) for maritime navigation.

Advantage of Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK)

o The biggest advantage of using GMSK is that it reduces the sideband power,
reducing out-of-band interference between signal carriers in adjacent
frequency channels.
o GMSK provides high spectral efficiency.

The disadvantage of Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK)

o It increases the modulation memory in the system that causes interference

within a symbol, making it more challenging to differentiate between different
transmitted data values.

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 o It requires more complex channel equalization algorithms, such as an
adaptive equalizer at the receiver.
o It has high power consumption.

Error Performance in Fading Channels

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHiCIWHqQQM

Network system designers need to understand the error performance of wireless

mobile channels in order to improve the quality of communications by deploying
better modulation and coding schemes, and better network architectures. It is
also desirable to have an accurate and thoroughly reproducible error model,
which would allow network designers to evaluate a protocol or algorithm and its
variations in a controlled and repeatable way. However, the physical properties of
radio propagation, and the diversities of error environments in a wireless medium,
lead to complexity in modeling the error performance of wireless channels.

https://web.stanford.edu/~dntse/Chapters_PDF/
Fundamentals_Wireless_Communication_chapter5.pdf

In telecommunications, the term cyclic prefix refers to the prefixing of a symbol, with a
repetition of the end. It provides a guard interval to eliminate intersymbol interference
from the previous symbol.The cyclic prefix used in Frequency Division Multiplexing
schemes including OFDM to primarily act as a guard band between successive
symbols to overcome intersymbol interference, ISI. Use of cyclic prefix is a key
element of enabling the OFDM signal to operate reliably.

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The basic principle of OFDM is to split a high-rate datastream into a number of lower
rate streams that are transmitted simultaneously over a number of subcarriers.
OFDM: Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, is a form of signal modulation
that divides a high data rate modulating stream placing them onto many slowly
modulated narrowband close-spaced subcarriers, and in this way is less sensitive to
frequency selective fading.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJg57AEBtNw

A very similar technique is known as Windowed-OFDM (W-OFDM) in

which windowing is applied in a manner that the window overlaps
with the complete OFDM symbol as well as the CP and the cyclic
suffix. Moreover, the window amplitude is −3 dB at the start and end
of the OFDM symbol.

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Windowing is the process of taking a small subset of a larger dataset, for
processing and analysis. A naive approach, the rectangular window,
involves simply truncating the dataset before and after the window, while not
modifying the contents of the window at all.
You can minimize the effects of performing an FFT over a noninteger number
of cycles by using a technique called windowing. Windowing reduces the
amplitude of the discontinuities at the boundaries of each finite
sequence acquired by the digitizer.

By using windowing functions, you can further enhance the ability of an FFT to
extract spectral data from signals. Windowing functions act on raw data to
reduce the effects of the leakage that occurs during an FFT of the data.
Leakage amounts to spectral information from an FFT showing up at the
wrong frequencies.

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Different Type in Windowing Techniques

· Uniform Window. The uniform window (also called the rectangular window) is a
time window with unity amplitude for all time samples and has the same effect as not
applying a window. ...
· Hanning Window. ...
· Gaussian Top Window. ...
· Flat Top Window. ...
· Blackman-Harris. ...
· Kaiser-Bessel. ...
· Gaussian.

The peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of a signal waveform is an important metric as

a small value implies that the power amplifier used to transmit signals can operate more
efficiently and thus save battery in the UE.Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
(OFDM) is the key technology used in high-speed communication systems. One of the
major drawbacks of OFDM systems is the high Peak to Average Power Ratio Peak to
Average Power Ratio (PAPR) of the transmitted signal. A signal with a high PAPR
requires a very large linear range of Power Amplifier (PA) at the transmitter side. To
propose a PAPR reduction algorithms is a big challenge, several methods are proposed
such as coding, clipping and filtering, companding, Selective Mapping Technique (SLM),
Partial Transmit Sequences (PTS), and Peak Insertion. To solve this problem, we
propose and study three new algorithms in OFDM systems with Solid State Power
Amplifier (SSPA) as a High Power Amplifer (HPA) type. To evaluate and analyze its
performances in terms of the PAPR and Bit Error Rate (BER), we performed some
computer simulations by varying the modulation schemes, Coding rate and Clipping Ratio
(CR).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4LAZTdm_b8

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