Chapter 1-2

Digital Baseband Modulation Techniques

1
 Outline
In a modern communication system, the basic unit of information is “bit”.
Mathematically, a bit represents either 0 or 1. The goal of a communication
system is to tell the receiver which one, i.e., 0 or 1, is transmitted.

A basic technique is to use a sequences of pulses to represent information. Each

pulse carries a bit of information. This is referred to as a binary scheme. Later
we will see that each pulse may also carry more than one bit of information.

We will discuss the following issues.

- generation of the signal to carry information at the transmitter,
- bandwidth requirement, and
- consequence of limited bandwidth.

Our emphasis is on bandwidth requirement. We will see that the transmission

speed (i.e., rate) is determined by the available bandwidth of the channel.
A. Binary Transmission

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 Binary Pulse Amplitude Modulation
Consider a stream of binary signals: 101110110100... to be transmitted
through a channel. We need to represent them by electronic signals, e.g.,
voltage waveforms. There are many ways to do this. The following is one.
Here a negative pulse represents “0” and a positive pulse represents “1”.
1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0

You can also use a negative to represent “1” and a positive pulse to represent
“0”, which will make no difference. (Why?)

This is the so-called binary pulse amplitude modulation (binary PAM).

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 One Bit = Two Possibilities
Which scheme here cannot be used
0 1 to transmit information?

bipolar Which scheme is more prone to

error?

Acronyms:
PAM: pulse amplitude modulation
on-off PPM: pulse position modulation
PWM: pulse width modulation
PAM PCM: pulse code modulation

Bipolar modulation is a special

form of PAM.

(We will learn PCM in detail later.)

PPM

PWM

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 Digital Commutation Systems
There are many different methods to represent binary digital systems. They are
broadly referred to as modulation techniques. Some of these techniques are not
so obvious as those shown in the previous slide. For example, the signal
transmitted from your mobile phone may have the following form. It is NOT so
obvious to see which pulse represents “1” and which represents “0” here.

0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0

We will gradually learn more about these modulation techniques in the

subsequent chapter.
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B. Spectrum of a Rectangular Pulse

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 Spectrum of a Rectangular Pulse
s(t)
A
A time domain signal s(t):
-t/2 0 t/2 t
t

S(f)
At
The corresponding Fourier transform S(f): f
sin( f t )
S ( f ) = At  = At sinc( f t ) -2/t -1/t 1/t 2/t
 ft

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 Impact of Pulse Width

s(t)
 S(f)
f
-t/2 t/2 t -2t -1/t 1/t 2/t

s(t) S(f)
 f
-t/2 t/2 -2/t -1/t 1/t 2/t

What is your observation of the above two signals?

What is the consequence if we want to transmit a very narrow pulse?
What is the relationship between the time domain speed and frequency domain
spectrum?
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 Spectrum Requirement
s(t)

t
A narrow pulse has a wide spectrum.
S(f)
At
f
-2/t -1/t 1/t 2/t
Next we will see that to transmit a sequence of pulses, the required spectrum
is roughly the same as transmitting a single pulse. If we want to transmit many
very narrow pulses, then we need to occupy a large range of spectrum. This is
a fundamental problem for digital communication systems.
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C. Average Spectrum
of Sequences of Pulses

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 Energy and Power Spectrums
The power spectrum of a single pulse s(t) is defined as:
power spectrum = |S(f)|2/t.
For example, the power spectrum of a rectangular pulse is shown below. It
is basically the same as the energy spectrum. (What is the difference?)
|S(f)|2/t

f
-2/t -1/t 1/t 2/t

If we transmit N pulses, the power spectrum is defined as:

power spectrum = |S(f)|2/(Nt).
The average of all possible power spectrums is referred to as “average
power spectrum”.
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 Spectrum of a Sequence of Pulses
A transmitted signal is typically a sequence of pulses.
x(t)

t
The time domain signal in a communication system typically has many
possibilities, depending on the binary information involved.

When we design a system, we usually consider the average of all possible

signals, rather than a specific one. We will see that, in terms of power
spectrum, a single pulse can represent the “average power spectrum”. The
latter is the average of the power spectrums of all possible pulse strings. This
property greatly simplifies the system design problem.

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 Average Power Spectrum
?
 ?
f
 ?
f
 f
 ?
?
f
 f
. .
. .
. .

N
1
average power spectrum =
N
P ( f )
n =1
n

f
-2/t -1/t 1/t 2/t

The average power spectrum of a sequence is the average of N power spectrums

{P1(f), P2(f), P3(f), … PN(f)} for all possible pulse combinations .
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 Property of Average Power Spectrum
It is difficult to derive the power spectrum of each individual pulse string.
However, in a tutorial question, we will see the following property:

average power spectrum = single pulse power spectrum

This is a very useful property. In practice, we always design a system based on

the average power spectrum

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D. Bandwidth

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 Definition of Bandwidth
|S(f)|

f
-2000Hz -1000Hz 1000Hz 2000Hz

4000Hz
The bandwidth is the range of the non-zero part of the spectrum. Due to the
symmetric property, we will normally measure bandwidth only using the
positive part of the spectrum. For example, for the above signal from
-2000Hz to 2000Hz range, we will say that its bandwidth is 2000Hz (not
4000Hz). This is a tradition used by engineers.
|S(f)|
f
What is the bandwidth of this signal?
-5000Hz -1500Hz 1500Hz 5000Hz

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 The Symmetry Property
Symmetry: For real s(t), S(-f)=S*(f) and so |S(f)|=|S(-f)|.

s(t)

-t/2 0 t/2 t

S( f ) = 
−
s(t )e− j 2 ft dt
f
-2/t -1/t 1/t 2/t

|S(f)| is symmetric (mirroring) with respect to the y-axis. Therefore in

engineering, we only consider the positive part of the spectrum.
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 Free Spectrum!

|S(f)|
f
-5000Hz -1500Hz 1500Hz 5000Hz

When you buy a spectrum license from Government, you only need to pay for
the positive part and get the negative part for “free”. Why? (The two parts
cannot be separated with real signals.)

Can we produce a complex signal in real life? (No.)

However, you may find “complex signalling” discussed in many books. This
actually means using a complex phasor to “represent” the phase of a signal. It
does not really mean “transmitting” a complex signal. We will see such
phasor representation when we discuss PSK signals.

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 Frequency Domain Power Distribution
A rectangular pulse has infinite bandwidth. However, most of the power of a
rectangular pulse is concentrated in the low frequency part. For example, the
following plot shows the power distribution of a rectangular pulse over different
frequency range. The in-band power ratio is then computed as follows.
f0


− f0
A2t sinc2 ( f t )df
h= 


−
A2t sinc2 ( f t )df

power spectrum f
|S(f)|2 -2/t −1/t 0 1/t 2/t

Power h = 78%
distribution h = 90%
h = 95% 20
 Bandwidth Efficiency
For a rectangular string with pulse duration t, we can transmit R=1/t pulses per
second.

t
1 second
Based on the above, we can draw the following results.
- for 78% in-band power ratio, bandwidth B=0.5/t=0.5R;
- for 90% in-band power ratio, bandwidth B=1/t=R;
- for 95% in-band power ratio, bandwidth B=2/t=2R.
The above can be used to determine the relationship between bandwidth B and data
rate R.

(Note: The above only applies to binary modulation. It does not apply to non-binary
order modulation such as QPSK and 8-PSK.) 21
E. Bandwidth Limitation

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 Bandwidth Requirement
To transmit a rectangular pulse, we need to use infinite bandwidth. This may break
the law, as it is illegal to transmit signal in a frequency range without Government
permission. A practical system can only occupy limited bandwidth. We must filter
the signal before transmission so as to limit the transmission bandwidth.

spectrum allocation
in Hong Kong

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 Filtering
input spectrum ideal low-pass filter output spectrum

0 fcut-off f 0 fcut-off f 0 fcut-off f

frequency transfer function

We may use a low-pass filter to remove the out-of-band signal. An ideal low-
pass filter is defined as above. It removes all frequency components above the
“cut-off” frequency.
Ideal filtering is easy for theoretical analysis. In practice, it is very impossible
to realize an ideal low-pass filter.
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 Summary
The bandwidth of a pulse is inversely proportional to its time duration.

The bandwidth B of a digital system based on binary rectangular pulses is related

to data rate R as follows.
- for 78% in-band power ratio, B=0.5R;
- for 90% in-band power ratio, B=R;
- for 95% in-band power ratio, B=2R.

Low-pass filtering may result in distortion. A practical system typically requires

90% of in-band power ratio.

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