CELLULAR

COMMUNICATIONS
4. Modulation
Modulation
 Radio signals can be used to carry information
 Audio, data, video
 Information is used to modify (modulate) a
single frequency known as carrier
 Modified(modulated) signal is transmitted to
receiver
 At the receiver the information is removed
from the radio signal
 Information is reconstructed into original
format through in a process of demodulation
Some key points
 Spectrum is scarce
 Spectrum is scarce natural resource.
 There is only limited range of wavelength that can be used for
communications
 Regulated by government (FCC)
 Modulation techniques should make effective use of spectrum, i.e.
transmit as much as possible information using given amount of
spectrum

 Efficient use of energy

 Mobile devices has limited battery
 Transmitting unnecessary energy on a radio carrier may interfere with
other transmitters
 Reliably Transmit information with minimal possible amount of energy
Radio Carrier
 Single alternated waveform.
 If carries no information appears at
receiver:
Amplitude Modulation(AM)
 Change amplitude of the signal
according to information
 Simplest digital form is “on-off
keying”(telegraph Morse code)
Amplitude Modulation
Fully modulated signal
AM
efficiency
 Carrier: w=2f
 Message: m(t), Signal y(t)=m(t)*c(t)
 Let consider highest frequency in a
message wc and its maximum/minimum
amplitude M

 Modulated Signal:

 After some trigonometry:

AM Energy usage

 Fully modulated A=2M

 Energy at carrier and one of sideband is wasted
 33% of the transmitted energy carries information
Audio AM
Frequency Modulation
FM efficiency
 Modulation index (max
change in carrier
frequency due to
modulation): M
 Bandwidth of FM
signal is BW = 2 (M +
1 ) fm
 fm maximum
modulating frequency
used
 Energy efficiency
increased by
increasing bandwidth
AM vs FM
 FM is more resilient to noise

 FM: signal level variation does not affect

quality provided the signal is strong
enough to recover its frequency

 Used for 1G analogue mobile phone

systems
Digital Version of FM
 Frequency Shift Keying (FSK)
Phase Modulation

 Another form of FM
Binary Phase Shift Keying
(BPSK)
Quadrature Phase Shift Keying(QPSK)

 BPSK, 180% change in phase represent

change in bit
 QPSK 90% change in phase represent
change in 2 bit sequence
Quadrature Amplitude
Modulation
16-QAM
Circular 16-QAM
Other QAMs
 HSPA+ (aka high speed GSM+) is 64QAM
 HDTV is 256QAM
 ADSL 16/64 QAM
Spread Spectrum
Techniques
 Conserve spectrum by keeping transmission as
narrow as possible
 Sometimes it’s beneficial to spread transmission
over wide frequency range (spread spectrum)
 Fading and noise might be different for different
frequencies
 Spreading over wide range of frequencies will help to
reduce errors/signal noise
 Spreading power over many frequencies result in very
low power transmission at each frequency
 Reduce interference to other transmitter , single
frequency transmission appears as a noise
Spread Spectrum

F F

Normal Signal Signal with Spread Spectrum

Frequency Hopping
 Transmitter sends a signal at each
frequency during very short period of
time
 Transmit next piece of data on other
frequency
 Hop hundreds of time per second
between different frequencies
 To receive the signal, receiver must be
able to follow the hop sequence of the
transmitter
 Both receiver and transmitter must
Frequency Hopping
Adaptive Frequency
Hopping
 Don’t transmit on a bad
frequencies/channels
 Measure error rate on each channel
Direct Sequence Spread
Spectrum
 AM/FM transmit around single carrier
 Frequency Hopping transmit at wide range of carriers
but one carrier at the time
 DSSS transmit at wide range of carriers simultaneously
 Very low power at each carrier
 Appears as a noise at each carrier
 Transmission across carriers is “synchronized” so signal can
be recovered
 Several transmissions on the same set of
carriers(spectrum) as looks as noise for each other
 Different transmissions use different “synchronization”
methods/codes
White Noise
 Completely random signal, alternates
widely
Spectrum of white noise
 Same average power at each frequency
Filtered (Bandlimited) Noise
How to make a carrier to look like band
limited noise?

 Make it look randomly alternating

 Modulate it with randomly alternating signal
(analog) or bits (digital)
 Represent data that we want to transmit with
a longer sequence of bits that “looks like
random” (pseudo-random)
 Use less time to modulate each bit (e.g. BPSK)
 Transmit modulate rapidly alternating signal
 Same total energy
 Speeded over wide ranges of frequencies
Example :DSSS with PN

 Transmitter/Receiver should be able to generate same

synchronized Pseudo Random Noise sequences
DSSS-PN
Receiver/Transmitter
Spreading
PN Sequences
 PN generator produces periodic sequence that
appears to be random
 PN Sequences
 Generated by an algorithm using initial seed
 Sequence isn’t statistically random but will pass many test
of randomness
 Sequences referred to as pseudorandom numbers or
pseudonoise sequences
 Unless algorithm and seed are known, the sequence is
impractical to predict
Some Properties of PN
sequences
 Balance property
 The number of "1"s in the sequence is one
greater than the number of "0"s.
 Run property: Of all the "runs" in the
sequence of each type (i.e. runs consisting
of "1"s and runs consisting of "0"s):
 One half of the runs are of length 1.
 One quarter of the runs are of length 2.
 One eighth of the runs are of length 3.
 ... etc. ...
Autocorrelation property

 Autocorrelation is large when signal/mask perfectly synchronized

 Synchronization between rx/tx
 Hopefully does not give a large peak when there is no signal
Orthogonal Sequences
 Cross correlation: same as
autocorrelation but among different
sequences
 Several different sequences with zero
cross-correlation between them allow
several transmissions at the same
channel (“range of carriers”)
 Base for Code Division Multiple Access
method (CDMA)
 3G/UMTS use version of CDMA(WCDMA)
 Will talk about it later
Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplex(OFDM)

 OFDM/COFDM Used in
 WiFi (802.11)
 ADSL
 WiMax
 4G
 More

 Provide very high data rates (e.g. up to

150Mbps 802.11n)
Multichannel
Communications
 Transmit bits in parallel using several carriers
(frequencies)
 Transmission over each carriers take certain amount of
bandwidth around this carrier
 Carriers need to be separated from each other to avoid
interference
 Relatively small amounts of parallel transmissions can
be fitted in a given spectrum
OFDM
 Select orthogonal carriers
 Reach maximum at different times
 Can pack close without much
interference
 More carriers within the same
bandwidth
More on OFDM