BER Analysis and Peak to Average Power Ratio of OFDM Using QPSK
and 16-QAM Digital Modulation Techniques
Y.Ramesh kumar , S.Krishna Santosh , S.A.V.Prasad
(ydramlav,krishnasantosh.sunkara,prasadA2)@gmail.com
Guided by
M.Vinodh Kumar,M.Tech (Communication Engg)
Abstract: Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing is a multi carrier communication
technique which is an advanced version of FDM
whose draw back for data transmission across a
channel is bad spectrum usage. This paper here
overcomes the drawback of FDM and describes
the spectral efficiency of communication system
using OFDM by taking two modulation
techniques and comparing their bit error rates
,spectral width and also calculates the peak to
average power ratio of the OFDM time domain
signal for QPSK and 16-QAM modulation
techniques.
Keywords: OFDM , QPSK , 16-QAM , IFFT , BER ,
Spectral Efficiency , PAPR
1. Introduction
A secured communication with the least distortion
and the least interference is the utmost requirement of
the new-age wireless communication system. Various
methods have been implemented to achieve a near-
secure communication. But taking into consideration
the multipath fading, inter-symbol interference, and
the various fading and distortion factors, this
condition is rarely achieved. So, with the available
channel conditions and provided bandwidth for the
exchange of information, orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing has been found out to be the
best option available for transmitting the maximum
data possible through a communication channel.
Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)
is a technique which provides better spectral
efficiency than frequency division multiplexing
(FDM) ,while maintaining orthogonal relation
between carriers , hence traffic is better carried by
OFDM than FDM within the same spectrum, due to
which there is a higher rate of data transmission. In
an OFDM scheme, a large number of orthogonal,
overlapping, narrow band sub-carriers are transmitted
in parallel. These carriers divide the available
transmission bandwidth. The separation of the sub-
carriers is such that there is a very compact spectral
utilization. With OFDM, it is possible to have
overlapping sub channels in the frequency domain,
thus increasing the transmission rate. The attraction
of OFDM is mainly because of its way of handling
the multipath interference at the receiver. Multipath
phenomenon generates two effects (a) Frequency
selective fading and (b) Inter symbol interference
(ISI).
Initially the transmission of digital data across the
channel gets transmitted as described in the fig 1 .
Here a high speed serial stream of data is converted
to low speed parallel data and then the parallel data
obtained is passed as a input to signal mapper where
output of each parallel line is modulated; here two
different schemes of modulation are followed Qpsk
and 16-Qam and the mapped signal is now Passed as
a input to the IFFT where the frequency domain
signal obtained is converted to a time domain signal
using a 64 point IFFT for which the number of
parallel lines taken are 52 . Now the time domain
signal obtained is given a guard interval spacing
between the sub carriers which is one fourth of the
original time duration here, for this paper we have
taken 16 micro seconds as our guard interval then the
time domain signal after insertion of guard interval is
passed through a digital to analog convertor which is
used to convert the signal to a analog form for
transmission along the channel. After this inverse
process is carried out at the receiver and the obtained
signal is converted to its digital form at the receivers
end, after which the original transmitted bits and the
received bits are compared with one another to find
out the error bits such that the bit error rate is
calculated, also another parameter to obtain the
spectral efficiency is the symbol error rate whose
values are obtained by taking into consideration the
number of bits per OFDM symbol and cumulative
distributive function also .After obtaining the time
domain form of OFDM signal as shown in fig 3 we
can calculate the peak power to the average power
ratio of the signal which can be obtained by taking
into account an important parameter that is
cumulative distributive function CDF of the time
domain signal obtained after IFFT.
 Fig 1: Block Diagram of OFDM Communication System

a)

b)

Fig 2: Constellation vector diagrams of Fig 3 : Consecutive OFDM sub carriers in

a) Qpsk and b)16-Qam time domain after modulation
 2. OFDM Transmission

Given a finite set of complex numbers Sk that carry

digitally encoded information to be transmitted , we
may use complex Fourier series for this purpose and
transmit the signal

.. (1)
The transmitter performs a Fourier synthesis. In an
ideal transmission channel with perfect
synchronization and no disturbances, the transmit
symbols Sk can be completely recovered at the Fig 4 Qpsk Modulator
receiver by the Fourier analyzer that plays the role of
the detector.one may send K new complex symbols
From the above figure it can be seen that each dibit is
during every time slot of length T by performing
split by a bit splitter after which for Logic 0= -1v
Fourier synthesis for that time slot. At the receiver
and Logic 1 = +1 , two phases are possible at the
the Fourier analysis is done for every time slot. This output of the I balanced modulator (+sinwct and -
method is called Orthogonal Frequency Division
sinwct) and two other phases are possible at the
Multiplexing (OFDM). This system can be
output of the Q balanced modulator(+coswct and -
implemented by the following sections that follow as
coswct).from the linear summer there are four
shown in Fig 1.
different possible phasor outputs given by the
expressions below in the space diagram as well
I. Signal Mapping different phase assignments for the group of dibits
are also shown in the figure 5 below :
Initially a random variable X is taken which takes
into account randomly generated bits from 1 to n
where n is equal to 256 taken for the paper above,
after which the binary bits are converted to decimal
format as shown below

Dec Binary
----- -------------------
13 1 0 1 1
7 1 1 1 0

a) Qpsk Mapping Scheme

Quadrature PSK sometimes called quaternary PSK is

another form of angle-modulated, constant amplitude
digital modulation. With Qpsk four output phases are
possible for a single frequency. Because there are Fig 5 a) Truth table b) Phasor Diagram c)
four phases there must be four different input
Constellation Diagram
conditions. With two bits there are four possible
conditions : 00,01,10,11. Therefore with Qpsk the
binary input data is therefore combined into two The above constellation diagram varies for different
group of bits called dibits. In the modulator each dibit modulation schemes for different SNR values as
code generates four different possible output phases shown in fig 2 above for Qpsk as well for Qam
(+45,+135,-45,-135) modulation schemes
 b) 16-QAM Mapping Scheme
Qam is a form of digital modulation technique where
Digital information is contained in both the phase and
amplitude of the transmitted carrier.16-QAM is an
M-ary system with M=16. The input data is acted on
groups of 4 bits.
Fig 6: 16-QAM Modulator
The figure above depicts the basic block diagram of
16-Qam transmitter. Here the input binary data of
four bits are divided into four channels I, I, Q, Q.
the I and Q bits determine the polarity and the I and
the Q determine the magnitude (logic 1 = 0.821v and
logic 0 = 0.22 v).Consequently the 2 to 4 level
convertors generate a 4 level PAM signal. The PAM
signals here modulate the in phase and the quadrature
carriers in the product modulators from the truth table
below the four outputs possible at each product
modulator. For the I channel the possible outputs are
0.821sinwct,-0.821sinwct, 0.221sinwct, -0.221sinwct
Fig 7 : Truth tables for I and Q channel
The linear summer now combines the outputs from
the I and Q channel and produces 16-output
conditions necessary for 16-QAM as shown in fig 8
below
Fig 8 Truth table, Phasor diagram, Constellation
diagram
II IFFT , Parallel to Serial Conversion
Now the obtained frequency domain signal y where
decimal frequencies are allocated to each decimal
value, is converted to a time domain signal by the
inverse fast fourier transform in eq (1) as shown
below
Where W = e j2/N .
At the transmitter side, an OFDM system treats the
source symbols as though they are in the frequency-
domain. These symbols are feed to an IFFT block
which brings the signal into the time-domain. If the N
numbers of subcarriers are chosen for the system, the
basic functions for the IFFT are N orthogonal
sinusoids of distinct frequency and IFFT receive N
symbols at a time. Each of N complex valued
input symbols determines both the amplitude and
phase of the sinusoid for that subcarrier. The
output of the IFFT is the summation of all N
sinusoids and makes up a single OFDM symbol. The
length of the OFDM symbol is NT where T is the
IFFT input symbol period. In this way, IFFT block
provides a simple way to modulate data onto N
orthogonal subcarriers.
Then, the parallel to serial block creates the OFDM
signal by sequentially outputting the time domain
samples. The channel simulation will allow
examination of the effects of noise, multipath, and
clipping. By adding random data to the transmitted
signal, simple noise can be simulated. Multipath
simulation involves adding attenuated and delayed
copies of the transmitted signal to the original. This
simulates the problem in wireless communication
when the signal propagates on many paths. Here the
channel is additive white Gaussian where random
noise channel is also made a part of it for simulation
purposes.
3. OFDM Reception
I. Serial to Parallel Conversion, FFT
Now the obtained OFDM Time domain signal
received is down converted an then passed through
the serial to parallel convertor where First, the
OFDM data are split from a serial stream into parallel
sets. The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) converts the
time domain samples back into a frequency domain
representation. The magnitudes of the frequency
components correspond to the original data.
II Signal Demapper
Qpsk Demodulator
The block diagram for Qpsk receiver is shown in the
figure below where the power splitter directs the
input Qpsk signal to the I and Q product detectors
and the carrier recovery circuits. The carrier recovery
circuits reproduce the original transmit carrier
oscillator signal.
Fig 9: Qpsk Receiver structure
The received carrier must be phase and frequency
coherent with the transmit reference carrier. The
Qpsk signal is demodulated in the I and Q product
detectors. The output of the product detectors are fed
to the bit combining circuit, where they are converted
from parallel I and Q data channels to a single binary
output data stream
16-QAM Demodulator
16-Qam Demodulation is generally complex in
nature to implement. In general Qam demodulation
takes place as shown in fig 10 below
Fig 10 : QPSK Receiver Structure
Here the input analog form of in phase and
quadrature phase signals at the transmitter are sent
across the demodulator where the coherent carrier is
made locked with the transmitted analog signal to
obtain the digital information sent, where the parallel
data obtained from the demodulator scheme is
converted back to its original transmitted high data
rate serial format using a parallel to serial convertor.
4. BER And PAPR Evaluation
Now as the transmitted and received form of data is
obtained therefore we can obtain the BER by
comparison as described below. For obtaining the bit
error rates for QAM and QPSK modulation, we have
initially taken theoretical bit error rate equations for
different modulations and obtained their band width
and channel capacities to take into account the least
minimum bandwidth channel modulation and a little
higher bandwidth modulation channel as shown
below :
 Table 2.1: Theoretical BER equations
The table above describes the various modulation
techniques and their theoretical bit error rates that
follow of which the extracted data is depicted below:
5. Simulation and results
Using MATLAB various simulations were carried
out for obtaining the spectral efficiency in context of
bit error rate, symbol error rate and peak to average
power ratio as shown in fig 11-14 as shown below.
Each symbol of Qpsk conveys 2 bits but that of 16-
Qam conveys 4 bits/symbol therefore in time domain
symbol period is generally twice as long as Qpsk.
here in general randomly 10,000 bits are generated to
detect the channel performance of OFDM in additive
white Gaussian environment. One of the major
problems in OFDM is peak to average power ratio of
encoded signals. Here no coding technique is used to
reduce PAPR since our main aim is to compare the
performance of modulation technique in severe
environment.

Table 2.2 Extracted Eb/No and BW values

From the above extracted values we choose Qpsk and Fig 11: Probability of BER vs Eb/No
16-Qam for OFDM modulation and calculated their
spectral efficiency at the expense of BER and PAPR a)

And the simulated result for the above depicted

equations is shown below in fig 11

Where Ber Bit Error Rate can be obtained by the no

of error bits received at the receiver to the total
number of bits transmitted,

For example if Pb is the probability of Bit error rate

then Symbol Error rate can be given by

Ps= 1-(1-Pb)2 . (3)

And finally the peak to average power ratio for all the
subcarriers is calculated by

(4)
b)

Fig 12: Comparison of performance of spectral
efficiency for a) 16-QAM b) QPSK
a)
Fig 14: PAPR CDF for Qpsk and 16-Qam
Here PAPR is simulated by taking the number of sub
carriers to be 114 and variation is done between -3 to
12 dB for both modulation techniques and from the
above graph we can have the difference values
between the two modulations is same therefore it is
difficult to make command about the improvement of
PAPR but performance of the both can be improved
by using coding technique or various other
techniques like amplitude clipping and noise filtering
technique as well.

6. Conclusion
From the above simulations we can make a
verification that each symbol of Qam conveys 4 bits
b) per symbol which is twice as that of Qpsk and in
terms of context of BER Qpsk yields better
performance than that of 16-Qam QPSK yields better
performance than that of 16-QAM,shown in Fig. 12-
13.Finally it could be concluded that BER
performance of QPSK is better than that of 16-QAM
at the expense of spectral width. Therefore 16-QAM
can carry more traffic than QPSK at the expense of
BER which is obvious in context of digital
modulation technique hence analysis of the paper
yield logical results in context of OFDM. PAPR
solely depends on coding technique not on
modulation technique, which is also verified from the
simulation.

Fig 13 : Symbol error rate probability curves for

a) 16-QAM b) QPSK
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