Department of Electronic Engineering

ELE4ACS

Modulation schemes

Lecture 8

Lecturer: Dr Iryna Khodasevych

Outline

 Amplitude modulation (AM)

 Frequency modulation (FM)
 Phase modulation (PM)
 Digital modulation or Shift keying

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Modulation
 Modulation is a technique of encoding information
contained in low frequency signal onto a higher
frequency signal.
 Lower frequency signal is called modulating signal.
 Higher frequency signal is called carrier, its frequency
is the centre of the radio channel.
 Demodulation is the process of extracting baseband
(low frequency) signal from bandpass signal (carrier).

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Analog modulation

Analog modulation uses modulating signal to

continuously vary the carrier. The following modulation
techniques are analog:
 Amplitude modulation (AM)
 Frequency modulation (FM)
 Phase modulation (PM)

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Amplitude modulation (AM)
 Carrier signal
vc (t )  Ac sin c t
 Modulating signal
vm (t )  Am sin mt
 Modulated signal
v(t )  Ac (1  m sin mt ) sin c t
Modulation index
m= k  Am  peak value of modulating signal
m
Ac peak value of carrier signal
 Bandwidth B  2 fm
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Amplitude modulation (AM)

Amplitude modulated signal quality is affected a lot

6 by variations in received power
Amplitude modulation (AM)

 undermodulation
km<1

 100% modulation
km=1

 overmodulation
km>1
distorts the signal,
7 should be avoided
Frequency modulation (FM)
 Carrier signal
vc (t )  Ac sin c t
 Modulating signal
vm (t )  Am sin mt
 Modulated signal
v(t )  Ac sin[ 2 ( f c  k f sin 2f mt )t ]
 Modulation index
f f - maximum change in frequency
kf 
fm f is few times fm
 Bandwidth -larger
B 2f than AM
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Frequency modulation (FM)
Sinusoidal wave

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Frequency modulation (FM)
 In frequency modulation amplitude of the signal stays
the same.
 Transmitted power is constant.
 The signal is less affected by noise because information
is not in the amplitude of the signal.
 Bandwidth can be traded for better signal to noise ratio.
 Nonlinear amplifiers, which are more power efficient can
be used.

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Phase modulation (PM)
 Carrier signal
vc (t )  Ac sin c t
 Modulating signal
vm (t )  Am sin mt
 Modulated signal
v(t )  Ac sin[ 2f ct  k sin 2f mt ]
 Modulation index
k   θ - maximum change in phase

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Digital modulation
Digital modulation uses representation of symbols as
groups of bits of information.
 Each symbol can have m states and is represented by n
number of bits, where n  logor2 m m  2n
 Example is ANSI or UTS-8 codes when each letter is
represented by 7 or 8 bits. 256  28
 Each bit is either 1 or 0.

The following modulation techniques are digital:

 ASK, FSK, PSK, BPSK, QPSK, QAM

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Signal sampling
 Sampling points should be sufficiently close to follow
the signal curve. Sampling frequency is at least 2 times
the signal frequency.
 Only discrete points are quantized (rounded to nearest
predetermined values), encoded and transmitted
saving power
q  2N

q – number of quantized levels

N- number of bits required for
each sample
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Signal sampling
 Pulse code modulation diagram

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Signal sampling
 Example m  2n

m  8 symbols n  3 bits

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Signal sampling
q  2N

• 7 bits per symbol is used

in ASCII to represent 128
letters, numbers and
specials symbols
• 8 bits per symbol is used
in ANSI to represent 256
letters, numbers and
specials symbols

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Digital modulation
 Symbol rate is defined in bauds/second
 If the symbol rate is fs then the symbol duration is
1
Ts 
fs
 If there are n bits per symbol, bit rate is given in bits
per second as:
R  n  baud rate

 The duration of each bit is 1

Tb 
R
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Digital modulation
 Bandwidth (or spectral) efficiency is defined as
number of bits transmitted per second per Hertz
R R is bit rate
B 
B B is bandwidth
 Power efficiency
Eb Eb is signal energy per bit
P 
N0 N0 is noise at the receiver

Eb (dBW)  RLS (dBW)  10  log R

RLS - total received power
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Digital modulation
 Maximum possible bandwidth efficiency is limited by
signal to noise ratio:

C
 B   log 2 (1  S / N )
B

C is channel capacity (bits/s)

B is bandwidth (Hz)
S/N is signal to noise ratio

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Bit error rate (BER)
 Noise in the channel can result in errors in received
signal
 Bit error rate is a likelihood of a bit received incorrectly

false bits
BER 
received bits

 BER 1 in 100000 or 10 is

5 considered acceptable

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Amplitude shift keying (ASK)
 Amplitude of the transmitted signal is on or off, which
corresponds to 1 or 0.

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Frequency shift keying (FSK)
 For signal 1 the transmitter transmits carrier frequency
f0, for signal 0 the transmitter transmits carrier
frequency f1.
 Minimum shift keying (MSK) means minimum
possible Δf is used.

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Frequency shift keying (FSK)
Square wave

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Phase shift keying (PSK)
 Carrier phase is switched between various discrete and
equispaced values

 Amplitude and frequency of the signal are the same

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Phase shift keying (PSK)
Square wave

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Biphase shift keying (BPSK)
 Phases of signals are chosen as 0° and 180°
 Bandwidth efficiency is 1 bit per second per Hz

Bandwidth
B  2R

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Quadriphase shift keying (QPSK)
 Phases of signals differ by 90°
 Bandwidth efficiency is 2 bit per second per Hz
 90° phase shift is introduced between two BPSK
switches

Bandwidth
27 BR
Constellation diagram
 Constellation is a graphical representation of possible
symbol sets.
 I represents in-phase component
 Q represents quadrature component

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Quadriphase shift keying (QPSK)
 Two data streams are transmitted simultaneously: in-
phase data stream (I) and quadrature data stream (Q)
which has phase shifted by 90 ° compared to I

 If in-phase carrier = cos ωt

quadrature carrier =
cos (ωt +90º)= -sin ωt

 If in-phase carrier = sin ωt

quadrature carrier =
sin (ωt +90º)= cos ωt
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Quadriphase shift keying (QPSK)
 Each QPSK symbol contains 2 bits of data.
 Modulated output can be represented in complex form.

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Quadriphase shift keying (QPSK)

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 M-ary PSK

8-PSK
 Bandwidth efficiency is 3 bps/Hz
 Each point represents 3 bits

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 M-ary PSK

16-PSK
 Bandwidth efficiency is 4 bps/Hz
 Each point represents 4 bits

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Quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)
 Both amplitude and phase of the signals are changed
 Higher levels of modulation provide better bandwidth
efficiency

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Quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)
 Mapping code to phase 8-QAM

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Quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)

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Constellation diagram
 More points on the constellation diagram mean
modulation scheme is more bandwidth efficient, more
bits per second can be transmitted.
 The closer the points the higher is probability of error.
 The closer the points the worse is power efficiency per
bit since signal to noise ration has to be higher

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Bandwidth efficiency
 If modulation system transmits 1 bit during each bit
period, the system bandwidth efficiency is 1 bit per
second per Hz (1bps/Hz)
 Bandwidth of 30 kHz can transmit 30 Kbps/Hz
 For M-PSK and M-QAM total number of states is
M  2n
 Theoretical bandwidth efficiency is n bps/Hz

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Bandwidth efficiency comparison
 Practical bandwidth efficiency is lower than
theoretical and is   0.75M

 Modulation bandwidth efficiencies:

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Bit error rate (BER)
 Bit error rates for various signal to noise ratios and
modulation schemes
 BER can be improved by increasing signal to noise ratio
 Higher levels of modulation require higher signal to noise
ratios

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Bandwidth efficiency
 Modulation bandwidth efficiency affects the cell area
that is required

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 References
1. Chang K.,”RF and Microwave Wireless Systems,” J. Willy & Sons, 2000
2. Rappaport, T.S., ”Wireless Communications”, 2nd ed., Prentice Hall PTR,
2002

Figure credits:
figures for the lecture are taken from Reference 1 and 2.

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