Pulse Position Modulation and Digital Carrier Systems

PULSE POSITION MODULATION

The amplitude and width of the pulses is kept constant but the position of each
pulse is varied in accordance with the amplitude of the sampled values of the
modulating signal.
 The position of the pulses is changed with respect to the position of the
reference pulses.
The PPM pulses can be derived from PWM as shown below. It may be noted that
with increase in the modulating voltage .The PPM pulses shift further with
respect to reference.
 The vertical dotted lines are the reference
lines and the ppm pulses marked at 1,2, 3
go away from their respective lines.
 This is corresponding to the increase in the
modulating signal amplitude.
 In a opposite way pulses 4,5,6,7 move
progressively closer to the reference lines
as the amplitude decreases
 The PWM pulses obtained at the comparator output are applied to a monostable which is negative
edge triggered . Hence corresponding to each trailing edge of PWM signal the monostable out put
goes high. Thus as the trailing edge of the PWM signal keep shifting in proportional with modulating
signal x(t) and the PPM pulses also keep shifting as shown in previous fig
 Demodulation of PPM:
 The noise corrupted PPM waveform is recd by the PPM
demodulator.
 The fixed duration pulses at the output of the pulse
generator are applied to the reset pin of the SR F/F.
 A fixed period reference pulse is generated from the
incoming PPM waveform and the SR F/F is set by the
reference pulses.
 Due to the set and reset signals applied to the F/F we get
a PWM signal at its ouput. This is further demodulated
 Advantages of PPM : Because the amplitude is constant the information
is not contained in the amplitude.
 Hence the noise added to PPM signal does not distort the
information…good immunity
 Possible to reconstruct PPM signal from the noise contaminated PPM
signal. This is also possible in PWM but not possible in PAM
 The transmitted power always remains constant.
Disadvantages of PPM :
 As the position of the PPM pulses is varied with respect to a reference
pulse a transmitter has to send synchronizing pulses to operate the
timing circuits in the receiver.
 Without them , the demodulation would not be possible to achieve.
 Large BW is required to ensure transmission of undistorted pulses.
 Digital Carrier Systems :The baseband signals have an adequately large
power at low frequencies and can be transmitted over a pair of wires.
 But to transmit them over long distances over radio links or satellites is not
practical because of the large antennas
 Hence the message signal spectrum has to be shifted to higher
frequencies.
 This is achieved by using the baseband digital signal to modulate a
sinusoidal carrier.
 This is called digital passband communication.
 These signals are transmitted over a bandpass channel.
 Bandpass modulation can provide the benefit of frequency division
multiplexing
 Basic Signalling schemes :
(1)Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK) (2) Phase shift Keying (PSK) and (3). Frequency
Shift keying (FSK).
 The digital modulation techniques can be classified as : (i) Coherent
Techniques and (ii) Non Coherent techniques.
 Coherent Techniques : Here we have to use a phase synchronized carrier to
be generated at the receiver to recover the information signal.
 The frequency and phase of the carrier produced at the receiver should be
synchronized with that at the receiver.
 These techniques are complex but yield better performance
 Non Coherent Techniques :In non coherent techniques no phase
synchronized local carrier is needed at the receiver. These techniques are
less complex. But the performance is inferior to that of coherent
techniques.
 Basically there are two types of digital modulation schemes : (i) Binary
and (ii) M-ary schemes
 In binary schemes we send any one of the two possible signals during each
signalling interval of duration T b. ( egs are ASK, FSK, PSK )
 In M-ary schemes we can send any one of the M possible signals during
each signalling interval of duration Tb.
 Examples include M-ary PSK, M-ary FSK, QPSK, MSK, QASK or QAM etc.
 Furthur M-ary schemes need less bandwidth as compared to the binary
schemes.
 However the error performance of M-ary schemes is poor as compared to
the binary schemes
 Probability of Error : The important goal of a passband data transmission
system is to design the receiver having minimum value of average
probability of error in presence of additive white Guassian noise (AWGN) .
 The value of error probability Pe of a system indicates its performance in
presence of AWGN.
 The value of Pe should be as small as possible
 Power Spectra : Plot of power spectral density plotted on Y axis vs
frequency ( X-axis). It gives us the information about the bandwidth
requirement and co channel interference
 Bandwidth Efficiency : The channel bandwidth and transmitted power ae the
two primary communication resources.
The bandwidth efficiency is defined as the ratio of the data rate to the
effectively utilized channel bandwidth.

Passband Transmission Model :The

bandpass modulation can be defined as the
process whereby the amplitude , freq or
phase of an RF carrier , or a combination of
them , is varied in accordance with the
information to be transmitted .
 The message source emits one symbol per Tb secs. And let them be denoted
as m1, m2, …m3
 Let the probabilities of these symbols be P(m1), P (m2)…. P(m3) .
 Furthur if all the M symbols from the message source are equally likely , then
we write
P(m1)=P (m2)=…………..P(mm)= 1/M
 The message source output is applied to the encoder that produces a
corresponding vector Si made of N real elements .
 The modulator produces a distinct symbol Si(t) of duration T b secs to
represent the symbol mi produced by the message source.
 The output of the modulator is transmitted over the communication channel
using ASK, FSK, PSK.
 The characteristics of the channel should be as follows
(i) The channel should be linear
(ii) The channel noise is the sample function of a white guassian noise which
has a zero mean and a spectral density (No/ 2)
 The reciever must do the following functions
(i) To reverse the operations performed by the transmiter
(ii) To minimise the effect of channel noise on the estimate m’ of the
transmitted symbol mi
Amplitude shift Keying (ASK) or ON-OFF keying (OOK) is the simplest digital modulation technique.In this method
there is only one unit energy carrier and it is switched on or off depending on the input binary sequence

To transmit symbol ‘0’ the signal s(t)=0. It is also known as

ON-OFF keying (OOK)
Signal Space Diagram of ASK : The ASK waveform of eq (14.)
is represented as :

This means that there is only one carrier function φ

1(t). The signal space diagram will have two points
on φ1(t). One will be at zero and the other will be
at √PsTb.
The distance between the two points will be :

A signal space is simply a collection of signals

(functions) that satisfies a certain mathematical
structure.
  Binary ASK or simple ASK is no longer widely used in digital communication systems.
 The ASK signal which is basically the product of the binary sequence and carrier signal has a
power spectral density (PSD) same as that of the on-off signal but shifted in the frequency
domain by fs.
 The two impulses shown in the figure below ocuur at Ɫfc.

 The spectrum of the ASK signal shows that it has a bandwidth of infinity.
 For practical purposes the BW is often defined as the BW of an ideal BPF centered at fc
whose output contains about 95% of the total average power content of the ASK signal.
 It may be proved that according to this criteriorn the BW of the ASK signal is roughly 3/Tb Hz.
 The advantage of BASK is its simplicity and the easiness to generate and detect the same.
 Its drawback is that it is sensitive to noise . It is used at low bit rates upto 100 bits /sec.