Modulation

Evan Everett and Michael Wu

ELEC 433 - Spring 2013
Questions from Lab 1?
 Modulation

x(t) = A sin(t + ) Carrier

Data 10100
Modulation

Goal: overlay data onto carrier signal (sinusoid)

Sinusoids have two very accessible parameters

Modulate amplitude and phase

 Modulation
1) Interference avoidance
Why not? 2) High freq small antennas

Data 10100
Modulation

Goal: overlay data onto carrier signal (sinusoid)

Sinusoids have two very accessible parameters

Modulate amplitude and phase

 Signal Representation: Phasor
Polar: Amplitude & Phase

Rectangular: In-phase (I) & Quadrature (Q)

/2
itu
de
pl

Q
Am

Im[x]
Phase
0
I
Re[x]

-/2

x(t) = A sin(t + ) x(t) = I cos(t) + Q sin(t)

I = A sin() Q = A cos()
 Signal Representation
Rectangular (I,Q) form suggests a practical implementation

I Q
Im[x]

cos(t) I
Re[x]

10100 I cos(t) + Q sin(t)

90
sin(t)
Q

Modulation = mapping data bits to (I,Q) values

 Digital Modulation
[01] [10]

[00] [11]

Maps bits to complex values (I/Q) (focus of the Lab 3)

Complex modulated values are called symbols

Set of symbols is called constellation or alphabet

# of symbols in constellation is modulation order, M

M-order constellation can encode ______ bits per symbol

 Digital Modulation
[01] [10]

[00] [11]

Maps bits to complex values (I/Q) (focus of the Lab 2)

Complex modulated values are called symbols

Set of symbols is called constellation or alphabet

# of symbols in constellation is modulation order, M

M-order constellation can encode log2(M) bits per symbol

 Phase Shift Keying (PSK)
Encodes information only in phase

BPSK (M =2) QPSK (M =4) 8-PSK (M =8)

[000]
[001]
[00] [01]

[0] [1]
[10] [11]

Constant power envelope

Pros: no need to recover amplitude, no need for linear amplifier
Con: wastes amplitude dimension
 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM)
Encodes information in both amplitude and phase

(I,Q) M M grid

4-QAM 16-QAM 64-QAM

Common in wideband systems: 802.11b 802.11g/n 802.11ac

16-QAM 64-QAM 256-QAM
 Bit-to-Symbol Mapping
Confusing with neighbor is most likely error
Best to minimize bit-difference between neighbors

Gray Coding
Neighboring symbols differ by only one bit
Extra performance at zero cost (this is rare!)

Natural-coded [01] [10] Gray-coded [01] [11]

QPSK QPSK
[00] [11] [00] [10]
 Tradeoff: Rate vs. Error Probability

By increasing modulation order, M, we get:

More data in same bandwidth :)

Lower noise tolerance (i.e. higher error probability) :(

Therefore, SNR dictates feasible constellation size

QPSK: 2 bits/symbol
Q

I
QPSK: 2 bits/symbol
Q

I
16-QAM: 4 bits/symbol
Q

I
64-QAM: 6 bits/symbol
Q

I
Bit error rate (BER) vs. SNR per bit (Eb/N0)

1E+00
BPSK
1E-01
QPSK
1E-02 8-PSK
16-QAM
1E-03 64-QAM
1E-04
BER

1E-05

1E-06

1E-07

1E-08

1E-09
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
Eb/N0 (dB)