Baseband and

Passband
Baseband and Passband
Signals/Channels
• Channels often approximated as LTI systems
• Signal passes through channel, and then noise is added
• Channels allocated/described typically in terms of frequency bands
• Signals have to be designed for the corresponding frequency
band
• Baseband channels/signals
• Energy concentrated in a frequency band around DC
• Passband channels/signals
• Energy concentrated in a frequency band away from DC

• Unified treatment of baseband and passband systems is needed

 Baseband Signals
Baseband signals have energy/power concentrated in a band around DC.

• Real baseband signal u(t) of bandwidth W

• U(f) obeys conjugate symmetry
 Re(U(f)) is symmetric (even)
 Im(U(f)) is anti-symmetric (odd)
 Passband Signals
Passband signals have energy/power concentrated in a band away from DC.

Carrier Bandwidth
frequency

Passband signal of bandwidth W

We only consider physical (real-valued) passband signals, hence their spectra

always obey conjugate symmetry
Examples of baseband
signals
Speech, audio are baseband signals

Two-level digital signal is baseband

But we often want to send such signals over a passband channel

(e.g., a 20 MHz WiFi channel at 2.4 GHz). Need to understand how passband
signals are structured in order to accomplish this.
Modulation: Baseband to
Passband
Consider a real-valued baseband message signal m(t)

Modulation: Translate to passband by multiplying by a sinusoid

or

Should be
positive

Carrier frequency should be bigger than the message bandwidth to keep away from DC
I and Q components
Can modulate separately using cosine and sine of carrier

Sinusoids are rapidly varying but predictable (contain no info)

Passband
In-phase (I) Quadrature (Q)
signal
component component

Real baseband signals

(contain all the information)

We now know that we can start from two real baseband

signals and get a passband signal by I/Q modulation.
I and Q Components
• uc(t) and us(t) are real baseband signals of bandwidth at most
W, with fc > W.

• uc(t) - In-phase (or I) component

• us(t) - Quadrature (or Q) component.

• The negative sign before the Q term is a standard

convention.
Upconversion and Downconversion
• Since the sinusoidal terms are entirely predictable once we specify fc, all
information in the passband signal up must be contained in the I and Q
components.
• Modulation for a passband channel therefore corresponds to choosing a
method of encoding information into the I and Q components of the
transmitted signal, while demodulation corresponds to extracting this
information from the received passband signal.
• In order to accomplish modulation and demodulation, we must be able
to upconvert from baseband to passband, and downconvert from
passband to baseband.
Example: (Approximately) Passband signal

I and Q components are time limited, hence cannot be strictly band limited
(approx. baseband signals)

But frequency content is concentrated around DC, well away from fc = 150 Hz.
(approx. passband signal)
Upconversion (Baseband to
Passband)
Block diagram follows directly from
equation defining the modulated signal
Downconversion: Passband to
Baseband
Works as long as receiver
is coherent (phase and
frequency of copy of carrier
at receiver same as that of
incoming signal)

Recovering the I component (similar derivation for Q component):

2f c terms rejected by LPF

Two Parallel Orthogonal Channels
***
• Can the I and Q components be chosen independent of each other?
• The I and Q components provide two parallel, orthogonal “channels” for
encoding information.

• Orthogonality of I and Q channels:

• The passband waveform ap(t) = uc(t) cos(2πfct) corresponding to the I
component, and the passband waveform bp(t) = us(t) sin(2πfct) corresponding
to the Q component, are orthogonal.
• Proof?
I and Q “channels” are orthogonal
(can send info in parallel on these channels)

Any real baseband waveforms

with bandwidth less than the
carrier frequency

Then, the passband waveforms ap (t) and bp (t) are orthogonal. Therefore,
Proof:

Check that i.e. x(t) has zero DC value

Why?
Let

U c  [ W1 , W1 ] W1  f c
U s  [ W2 , W2 ] W2  f c
U c U s  [ (W1  W2 ), (W1  W2 )] W1  W2  2 f c

p(t) is baseband with BW at most equal to sum of bandwidth of uc and us < 2fc
Passband Signal
• Since a passband signal is equivalent to a pair of real-valued baseband waveforms
(uc, us), passband modulation is often called two-dimensional modulation.

• The representation in terms of I and Q components corresponds to rectangular

coordinates (the “cosine axis” and the “sine axis”). The passband waveform can
also be represented using polar coordinates.
Passband modulation is 2-
dimensional
Passband signal can be mapped to a pair of real baseband signals
That is, passband modulation is two-dimensional. Can also plot it on complex plane.

Q component Complex envelope

Envelope
Phase

I component

Three equivalent representations of the passband signal

Rectangular coordinates: I and Q
Polar coordinates: Envelope and phase
Complex number: Complex envelope
Three equivalent representations for a
passband signal

In terms of
I and Q components

In terms of
u p (t) e(t)cos(2f c t   (t)) Envelope and phase

In terms of
complex envelope


uc (t) e(t)cos (t), us (t) e(t)sin  (t)


Complex Envelope Representation

• Since the phase variation due to fc is predictable, it cannot convey any

information. Thus, all the information in a passband signal is contained in its
complex envelope u(t).

• We can define the complex baseband representation of a passband signal

using an arbitrary frequency reference fc (and can also vary the phase
reference), as long as we satisfy fc > W, where W is the bandwidth of the
baseband signal u(t).
Reference Frequency/Phase
• The complex baseband representations for two different references
can be transformed.
• up(t) = uc1(t) cos(2πf1t+θ1)−us1(t) sin(2πf1t+θ1)
= uc2(t) cos(2πf2t+θ2)−us2(t) sin(2πf2t+θ2)

• Write in terms of .
Reference Frequency/Phase
Change of reference frequency/phase
Need for carrier sync.
Effect of carrier phase offset
• Consider the passband signal

• Now consider a phase shifted version of passband signal as

• Downconversion uses reference signal as 2cos 2 and -2sin 2

• What will be I and Q components as fun of after downconversion?
Effect of carrier phase offset
• Since

Actual I and Q components ge

attenuated plus there is cross
channel interference
Get back actual baseband signal
u(t)?
Frequency Domain Relationships
[]
BackTrack:
• Given the spectrum Up(f) for a real-valued passband signal up(t), find U(f), the
spectra of the complex envelope in baseband

• C(f) can be constructed as a scaled version of U+p (f) = Up(f)I[0,∞)(f), the positive
frequency part of Up(f):
Conversion
Frequency domain construction of complex envelope

PASSBAND SIGNAL

Move to left by fc Move to left by fc

Scale by 2 Scale by 2

Throw away negative

frequencies part Throw away negative
frequencies part
COMPLEX ENVELOPE
Why the frequency domain
construction works…
 Why the frequency domain
construction works…

Let us define

We already know

This gives
I and Q components in frequency
domain
I and Q in time domain

I and Q in frequency domain

ans
Modern transceiver architectures are based on
complex baseband

All the action is in complex baseband for a typical wireless transceiver

Channel Encoding RF signal Filtering

Modulation Upconversion Dnconversion Synchronization
Spectral Shaping Demodulation
Decoding
Complex Complex
DSP-based envelope envelope DSP-based
processing processing
TRANSMITTER RECEIVER
Most transceiver operations can be performed in
complex baseband

• Filtering
• Carrier frequency/phase correction
• Coherent and noncoherent reception
Passband filtering is equivalent to complex
baseband filtering

up(t) hp(t) yp(t)

EQUIVALENT TO

u(t) h(t) y(t)

(except for a scale factor of 2)

Proof:
• Passband i/p signal

• Impulse response of passband filter

• In freq. domain the filtered o/p

• So, is a passband signal

For real valued signal in time domain  spectra is conjugate symmetric
 Filtering in complex
baseband
Complex-valued convolution to implement equivalent of passband filtering operation

Requires four real-valued convolutions:

solution
solution
Proof
Correlation between baseband signals
Summary
• Any real-valued passband signal can be represented by a complex-
valued baseband signal. This is called complex baseband
representation.
• Three equivalent representation of passband signal
• Cartesian coordinates: In-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) components
• Polar coordinates: Envelope (e(t)) and phase ()
• Complex envelope: u(t)

u p (t) e(t)cos(2f c t   (t))


• Most of the sophisticated signal processing action in modern
transceivers happens in complex baseband
• The complex envelope u(t) carries all the information in the passband
signal
• Passband filtering, correlation operations can be equivalently
performed in complex baseband