Digital Modulation

Techniques

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Digital Modulation

 The input is discrete signals

• Time sequence of pulses or symbols
 Offers many advantages
• Robustness to channel impairments
• Easier multiplexing of variuous sources of information:
voice, data, video.
• Can accommodate digital error-control codes
• Enables encryption of the transferred signal
• More secure link

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Digital Modulation
The modulating signal is respresented as a time-sequence of symbols
or pulses.

Each symbol has m finite states: That means each symbol carries n bits
of information where n = log2m bits/symbol.

...
Modulator
0 1 2 3 T

One symbol
(has m states – voltage levels)
(represents n = log2m bits of information)

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Factors that Influence Choice of
Digital Modulation Techniques
 A desired modulation scheme
 Provides low bit-error rates at low SNRs
 Power efficiecny
 Performs well in multipath and fading conditions
 Occupies minimum RF channel bandwidth
 Bandwidth efficieny
 Is easy and cost-effective to implement
 Depending on the demands of a particular
system or application, tradeoffs are made
when selecting a digital modulation scheme.

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Power Efficiency of Modulation
 Power efficiency is the ability of the modulation technique to
preserve fidelity of the message at low power levels.
 Usually in order to obtain good fidelity, the signal power needs
to be increased.
 Tradeoff between fidelity and signal power
 Power efficiency describes how efficient this tradeoff is made

 Eb 
Power Efficiency :  p   required at the receiver input for certain PER 
 N0 
Eb: signal energy per bit
N0: noise power spectral density
PER: probability of error

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Bandwidth Efficiency of Modulation

 Ability of a modulation scheme to accommodate

data within a limited bandwidth.
 Bandwidth efficiency reflect how efficiently the
allocated bandwidth is utilized

R
Bandwidth Efficiency :  B  bps/Hz
B
R: the data rate (bps)
B: bandwidth occupied by the modulated RF signal

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Shannon’s Bound
There is a fundamental upper bound on achievable bandwidth efficiency.
Shannon’s theorem gives the relationship between the channel
bandwidth and the maximum data rate that can be transmitted over this
channel considering also the noise present in the channel.

Shannon’s Theorem

C S
 B max   log 2 (1  )
B N
C: channel capacity (maximum data-rate) (bps)
B: RF bandwidth
S/N: signal-to-noise ratio (no unit)

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Tradeoff between BW Efficiency and
Power Efficiency
 There is a tradeoff between bandwidth
efficiency and power efficiency
 Adding error control codes
 Improves the power efficiency
 Reduces the requires received power for a particular bit
error rate
 Decreases the bandwidth efficiency
 Increases the bandwidth occupancy
 M-ary keying modulation
 Increases the bandwidth efficiency
 Decreases the power efficiency
 More power is requires at the receiver

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Example:
 SNR for a wireless channel is 30dB and RF
bandwidth is 200kHz. Compute the theoretical
maximum data rate that can be transmitted over this
channel?
 Answer:
 30 dB 
S  10 
 10  
N
S
C  B log 2 (1  )  2 x105 log 2 (1  1000)  1.99 Mbps
N

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Noiseless Channels and Nyquist
Theorem
For a noiseless channel, Nyquist theorem gives the relationship
between the channel bandwidth and maximum data rate that can be
transmitted over this channel.

Nyquist Theorem

C  2 B log 2 m
C: channel capacity (bps)
B: RF bandwidth
m: number of finite states in a symbol of transmitted signal

Example: A noiseless channel with 3kHz bandwidth can only transmit

maximum of 6Kbps if the symbols are binary symbols.

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Power Spectral Density of Digital
Signals and Bandwith
 What does signal bandwidth mean?
 Answer is based on Power Spectral Density (PSD)
of Signals
 For a random signal w(t), PSD is defined as:
W (f)2 
Pw( f )  lim  T 

T  T
 
WT ( f ) is th fourier transform of wT (t )
 T T
w(t )   t 
wT (t )   2 2
0 elsewhere

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Line coding
 Digital baseband signals often use line codes to provide particular
spectral characteristics of a pulse train
 Most common codes used in mobile communication are return-to-
zero (RZ), non-return-to-zero (NRZ) and Manchester codes
 These may be either unipolar (voltage level either 0 or V) or bipolar
(voltage level either V or -V)
 RZ implies that the pulse returns to zero within every bit period
 NRZ on the other hand do not return to zero during a bit period, the
signal stays at constant levels throughout a bit period
 NRZ codes are spectrally better than RZ but offer poor
synchronization
 The Manchester code is a special type of NRZ line code that is
ideally suited for signaling that must pass through phone lines and
other dc blocking circuits, as it has no dc component and offers
simple synchronization

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Digital Modulation - Continues
 Line Coding
 Base-band signals are represented as line codes
1 0 1 0 1 0 1
Tb

V
0 Unipolar
Tb NRZ
V
Bipolar
RZ
-V
V
Manchester
-V NRZ

Tb

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Linear Modulation Techniques

 Classify digital modulation techniques as:

 Linear
 The amplitude of the transmitted signal varies linearly with
the modulating digital signal, m(t)
 They usually do not have constant envelope
 More spectral efficient
 Poor power efficiency
 Most popular techniques: QPSK, OQPSK and π/4 QPSK
 Non-linear

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Binary Phase Shift Keying
 Use alternative sine wave phase to encode bits
 Phases are separated by 180 degrees
 Simple to implement, inefficient use of bandwidth
 Very robust, used extensively in satellite communication
 sinusoidal carrier amplitude Ac, Energy per bit Eb = ½ Ac 2 Tb

s1 (t )  Ac cos(2f c   c ) binary 1
s2 (t )  Ac cos(2f c   c   ) binary 0
Q

0 1
State State

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BPSK waveforms
1 1 0 1 0 1
Data

Carrier

Carrier+ 

BPSK waveform

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BPSK
 If no multipath impairments are introduced by the channel, the received BPSK
signal

 The output of the multiplier after the frequency divider

 The received signal is squared to generate a dc signal and an amplitude
varying sinusoidal at twice the carrier frequency
 The dc signal is filtered out using a band pass filter with centre frequency
tuned at 2fc
 A frequency divider is then used to recreate the waveform cos(2πfct)
 The output of the multiplier after the frequency divider is given by

 This signal is applied to an integrate and dump circuit which forms the
low pass filter segment of a BPSK detector
 If the transmitter and receiver pulse shapes are matched, then the
detection will be optimised

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Block diagram of BPSK receiver

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Differential Phase Shift Keying
 Noncoherent form of phase shift keying ) avoids the need for a coherent
reference signal at the receiver
 Input binary sequence is first differentially encoded and then modulated
using BPSK modulator
 Differentially encode: . . Leave dk unchanged from the previous
symbol if the incoming binary symbol mk is 1 and to toggle dk if mk is 0.

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DPSK Transmitter

 It consists of a one-bit delay element and a logic circuit interconnected so as

to generate the differentially encoded seqence from the input binary
sequence
 The output is then passed through a product modulator to obtain a DPSK
signal
 DPSK signaling has about 3 dB worst energy efficency than coherent PSK
 Average probability of error for DPSK in AWGN channel is

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DPSK receiver

 At the receiver the original sequence is recovered from the

demodulated differentially encoded signal through a
complementary process

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Quadrature Phase Shift Keying(QPSK)

 Multilevel Modulation Technique: 2 bits per symbol

 More spectrally efficient, more complex receiver
 Two times more bandwidth efficient than BPSK
Q

11 State
01 State

00 State 10 State

Phase of Carrier: /4, 2/4, 5/4, 7/4

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4 different waveforms
1.5 cos+sin 1.5 -cos+sin
1 1
0.5 11 0.5 01
0 0
-0.5 -0.5
-1 -1
-1.50 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 -1.50 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1

1.5 1.5
1 1 00
10
0.5 0.5
cos-sin -cos-sin
0 0
-0.5 -0.5
-1 -1
-1.50 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 -1.50 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1

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QPSK
 The average probability of bit error in the AWGN channel is

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QPSK Transmitter
 unipolar binary bit-stream
with bit-rate Rb is first
converted to NRZ using
unipolar to bipolar converter
 input bit stream split into 2 bit

streams each having bit rate

of Rs=Rb /2
 One is called “even” stream

and the second one is called

odd stream
 Two binary sequences separately modulated by two separate carriers Φ1(t)

and Φ2(t) which are in quadrature

 Two modulated signals each of which can be considered to be a BPSK signal
are summed to produce QPSK signal

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QPSK receiver

 The BPF filter removes the out-of-band noise and adjacent channel interference
 Filtered output is split into 2 parts, each part coherently demodulated using in-phase
and quadrature carrier
 The coherent carriers used for demodulation are recovered from the received signal
by using carrier recovery circuits
 The outputs of the demodulators are passed through decision circuits which generate
in-phase and quadrature binary streams
 Two components are then multiplexed to reproduce the original binary sequence

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offset QPSK
 To ensure fewer baseband signal transitions applied to the RF amplifier =>
supports more efficient amplification and helps eliminate spectrum regrowth
 Even and odd bit streams, mi (t) and mq(t) are offset in their relative
alignment by one bit period (half-symbol period)
 Only one of the two bit streams can change values => maximum phase shift
of the signal is limited to ± 90 degree

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QPSK vs offset QPSK

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Constant Envelope Modulation

 Amplitude of the carrier is constant,

regardless of the variation in the modulating
signal
 Better immunity to fluctuations due to fading
 Better random noise immunity
 Power efficient
 They occupy larger bandwidth

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Frequency Shift Keying (FSK)
 The frequency of the carrier is changed according to the message state
(high (1) or low (0)).

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FSK Example
Data

1 1 0 1

FSK
Signal

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Frequency Shift Keying
 Transmission bandwidth BT of an FSK signal Bt = 2∆f +2B
 Rectangular pulses is B = R => Bt = 2(∆ f +R)
 Raised cosine pulse-shaping filter Bt= 2 ∆ f +(1+α)R
coherent detection of binary FSK:
 The receiver shown is the optimum detector for coherent binary FSK
 It consists of 2 correlators which are supplied with locally generated coherent
reference signals
 The difference of correlator outputs is then compared with a threshold
comparator

 If difference signal has

value greater than the
threshold it’s a bit 1
otherwise 0

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Minimum Shift Keying (MSK)
 A special type of continuous phase frequency shift keying (CPFSK) wherein
the peak frequency deviation is equal to ¼ the bit rate.
 Modulation index: kFSK = (2∆F)/Rb, where ∆F is the peak RF frequency
deviation and Rb is the bit rate
 Minimum shift keying: the minimum frequency separation (i.e., bandwidth)
that allows orthogonal detection
 MSK signal can be thought of as a special form of OQPSK where the base
band rectangular pulses are replaced with half-sinusoidal pulses
 MSK is spectrally efficient modulation scheme and thus attractive to be used
in mobile radio communication systems
 If half-sinusoidal pulses are used instead of rectangular pulses, the modified
signal can be defined as MSK and for an N-bit stream is given by

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MSK transmitter

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MSK receiver

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Gaussian MSK (GMSK)
 Passing the modulating NRZ data waveform through a premodulation
Gaussian pulse-shaping filter
 Considerably reducing the sidelobe levels in the transmitted spectrum
 Excellent power efficiency (due to the constant envelope) and spectrum
efficiency
 ISI degradation is not sever if the 3-dB bandwidth bit duration product BT >
0.5
 As long as GMSK irreducible error rate is less than that produced by the
mobile channel, no penalty in using GMSK

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Gaussian MSK (GMSK) Transmission and Reception

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References

 Wireless Communications, Principles and

Practices: By Theodore .S Rappaport

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