RF Wireless World

 HOME
 ARTICLES
 TUTORIALS
 APP.NOTES
 VENDORS
 source
 TERMINOLOGY
 ACADEMIC
 T&M
 CALCULATORS
 NEWS
 GENERAL
 BOOKS
 DOWNLOADS
 CONTACT
 SITEMAP

Home of RF and Wireless Vendors and Resources

One Stop For Your RF and Wireless Need

BPSK vs QPSK-Difference between BPSK and QPSK

This page on BPSK vs QPSK describes difference between BPSK and QPSK modulation
techniques.It mentions link to basics of BPSK and QPSK along with difference between various
terminologies.

These are digital modulation techniques where in data input is digital (i.e. in binary form) and
output is modulated analog spectrum as shown below in power spectral density plot. Another
input required for modulating the digital input bit stream is also analog RF carrier.
BPSK and QPSK modulations techniques have their own advantages and disadvantages and
hence are used in the same wireless system for different purpose. On this page we will compare
both BPSK vs QPSK modulations and also will go through difference between BPSK and
QPSK in terms of many useful factors such as constellation diagram, robustness, power spectral
density(PSD) etc.

BPSK

fig.1 BPSK constellation digram

The short form of Binary Phase Shift Keying is referred as BPSK. For step by step description of
how bit streams get converted to BPSK symbols, refer BPSK modulation.

Input Output
1 1
0 (0 degree) -1 (180 degree w.r.t. reference)

QPSK
fig.2 QPSK constellation diagram

The short form of Quadrature Phase Shift Keying is referred as QPSK. For step by step
description of how bit streams get converted to QPSK symbols, refer QPSK modulation.

Input1 Input2 Output

0 0 -1-1*i
0 1 -1+1*i
1 0 1-1*i
1 1 1+1*i

Usually above complex values are multiplied with 1/sqrt(2) or 0.7071 in order to normalize the
modulated waveform. After understandig the modulation types individually, now let us examine
the difference between BPSK and QPSK.

As mentioned above in the table, BPSK represents binary input 1 and 0 w.r.t. change in carrier
phase by 180 degree. While QPSK represents two bits using complex carrier symbol each having
90 degree shift with one another. BPSK is considered to be robust modulation scheme compare
to the QPSK as it is easy in the receiver to receiver the original bits.
After passing both BPSK and QPSK through channel and noise, in the BPSK demodulator only
two decision points are required to retrieve the original binary information. In QPSK
demodulator four decision points are needed. With BPSK, higher distance coverage can be
achieved from the base station cellular cell or fixed station to the mobile subscribers compare to
QPSK.

fig.3 Power spectral density of BPSK vs QPSK

QPSK has advantages of having double data rate compare to BPSK. This is due to support of two
bits per carrier in QPSK compare to one bit per carrier in the case of BPSK.

Figure-2 mention difference between power spectral density of BPSK and QPSK modulated
spectrum.

To take advantage of both the modulation schemes advance wireless systems such as WLAN,
WiMAX, LTE utilize both for different channel or synchronization signals. For example BPSK
is used for preamble or pilot sequences or beacon frame used for channel and other
synchronization purpose. While QPSK is used for data transmission to provide higher data rate.
BPSK QPSK and other Modulation types links

Other than BPSK vs QPSK one can also refer following links which mentions difference
between AM vs FM vs PM, ASK vs FSK vs PSK, about modulation basics and modulation types
viz. BPSK, QPSK, QAM, 8PSK, DPSK, MSK, GMSK, C4FM vs CQPSK etc.
AM vs FM vs PM  ASK vs FSK vs PSK  what is modulation  MSK and GMSK modulation  8-
PSK modulation  QPSK modulation  BPSK modulation  QAM modulation  DPSK Modulation 
C4FM vs CQPSK

What is difference between

C4FM vs CQPSK
Refer QPSK vs OQPSK vs pi/4QPSK for difference between QPSK, OQPSK and pi/4QPSK
modulation types
difference between OFDM and OFDMA
Difference between SC-FDMA and OFDM
Difference between SISO and MIMO
Difference between TDD and FDD
FDMA vs TDMA vs CDMA
FDM vs TDM
CDMA vs GSM

RF and Wireless Terminologies

SATELLITE  RF  Antenna  Avionics  Wireless  LiFi vs WiFi  MiFi vs WiFi  BPSK vs QPSK 
BJT vs FET  PDH vs SDH  CS vs PS  MS vs PS 

Share this page

Translate this page

ARTICLES   T & M section   TERMINOLOGIES   Tutorials   Jobs & Careers   VENDORS  
IoT   Online calculators   source codes   APP. NOTES   T & M World Website  

 RF Wireless Tutorials
 5G NR|Zigbee|z-wave|Bluetooth|GSM| UMTS|LTE|WLAN|802.11ac| IoT|
RADAR|satellite|Waveguide|

Popular Tutorials

DECT|  ISDN|  ATM|  WBAN|  TransferJet|  BLE|  Femtocell|  HSPA|  BACnet|  Ethernet| 
TETRA|  Underwater wireless|  5G|  LiFi|  LoRa|  NFC|  Infrared|  RF measurements|  VSAT| 
Diode|  SS7|  Networking|  Network Security|  FTTH|  KNX|  WAP|  Mobile IP|  Optical
Wireless| 

Popular terms

Terminology Index|  WiDi vs WiFi|  RF Components|  Optical Components|  GSM channels| 

LTE channels|  CSMA-CD/CA|  LAN vs PAN|  NFC Tag vs Reader|  VDSL vs G.fast|  Sensors| 
wireless PHY|  Diac vs Triac|  JUGFET vs MOSFET|  IoT Wireless|  RF Over Fiber|  IP2 vs
IP3|  ASK FSK PSK

 HOME
 ARTICLES
 TUTORIALS
 APP.NOTES

 VENDORS
  SOURCE
 TERMINOLOGY
 ACADEMIC

 T&M
 CALCULATORS
 NEWS
 GENERAL

 BOOKS
 DOWNLOADS
 CONTACT
 SITEMAP

©RF Wireless World 2012, RF & Wireless Vendors and Resources, Free HTML5 Templates

Linear Block Codes

Some elementary concepts of block codes are introduced in Chapter 1. In general, it is known that the
encoding and decoding of 2 k codewords of length n can be quite complicated when n and k are large
unless the encoder has certain special structures. In this chapter, a class of block codes, called linear block
codes, is discussed. Such codes have a linear algebraic structure that provides a significant reduction in
the encoding and decoding complexity, relative to that of arbitrary block codes. It might be asked whether
restricting our attention to linear codes is limiting in an information-theoretic sense. The Shannon random
coding bound shown in Chapter 1 pertains to general block codes. However, it is known [1] that some
linear codes can also provide an excellent error-correcting capability. In fact, there is a sequence of linear
codes with increasing block length and a fixed rate that is only slightly smaller than channel capacity and
has an error probability which approaches zero exponentially as the block length increases.

3LinearBlockCodesSomeelementaryconceptsofblockcodesareintroducedinChapter1.Ingeneral,itis
knownthattheencodinganddecodingof2kcodewordsoflengthncanbequitecomplicatedwhennandkar
elargeunlesstheencoderhascertainspecialstructures.Inthischapter,a
classofblockcodes,calledlinearblockcodes,isdiscussed.Suchcodeshavea
linearalgebraicstructurethat providesa
significantreductionintheencodinganddecodingcomplexity,relativetothatofarbitraryblockcodes.It
mightbeaskedwhetherrestrictingourattentiontolinearcodesis limitinginaninformation-
theoreticsense.TheShannonrandomcodingboundshowninChapter1pertainstogeneralblockcodes.H
owever,it isknown[1]thatsomelinearcodescanalsoprovideanexcellenterror-
correctingcapability.Infact,thereisa sequenceoflinearcodeswithincreasingblocklengthanda
fixedratethatisonlyslightlysmallerthanchannelcapacityandhasanerrorprobabilitywhichapproaches
zeroexponentiallyastheblocklengthincreases.3.1Error-
ControlBlockCodesLetqdenotethenumberofdistinctsymbolsemployedona
channel.Hereq,ingeneral,canbearbitrary.AblockcodeCisa
setofMsequencesofchannelsymbolsoflengthn.Theseq-aryn-
tuples(vectors)arecalledthecodewordsofthecode.Inthisbook,asinallpracticalsystemsandmosttheore
ticalanalyses,thenumberofcodewordsistakentobeapowerofq,i.e.M=qk.Theencodingprocessconsist
sofbreakingupthesequenceofq-
arymessagesymbolsintoblocksoflengthk,andmappingtheseblocksintocodewordsoflengthninC.Itis
desirablethatthismappingis one-to-onetoI. S. Reed et al., Error-Control Coding for Data
Networks© Kluwer Academic Publishers 1999
74Chapter3ensurethattheencodedoriginalmessagedatacanberecoveredatthereceiver.Thecorruption
ofacodewordbychannelnoiseismodeledusuallyastheadditiveprocess,showninFigure3.1.errorvector
e=(eo,el,···,el/_I)---14f------
+.codewordc=(co,c1"",cl/_l)receivedwordr=C+e=(ro,rl'"''rl/_l)Figure3.1Asimplifiedmodelforana
dditivenoisychannelFigure3.1illustratesabasebandmodelofachannelwhichsuppressesallofthemodu
lationanddemodulationfunctions,thoughtheyare,ofcourse,presentinmostrealcommunicationsystem
s.Themodulationformat,transmitterpowerlevel,andtheamountofnoiseonthechanneldeterminestheli
kelihoodthateachoftheqnpossibleerrorpatternseoccurs.Thismodelisparticularlyusefulwithbinarych
annelsinwhichtheerror-patternadditionisperformedasacomponent-by-
componentsum,module2.Theerror-
controldecoderinthereceiverperformsseveralfunctions.Inalmostallcasesthedecoder'sfirsttaskistoex
aminethereceivedwordandtodeterminewhetherornotit
isacodeword.Ifthereceivedwordisfoundtobeinvalid,thenitisassumedthatthechannelhascausedoneor
moresymbolerrors.Thedeterminationofwhethererrorsarepresentina receivedwordis
callederrordetection.Anerrorpatternisundetectableifandonlyif it
causesthereceivedwordtobeavalidcodewordotherthanthatwhichwastransmitted.Givenatransmitted
codewordC,thereareqk-1codewordsotherthanCthatcouldarriveatthereceiver,andthusthereareqk-
1undetectableerrorpatterns.Thedecodercanreacttoadetectederrorwithoneofthefollowingthreerespo
nses:1.Requestaretransmissionofthecodeword.2.Tagthewordasbeingincorrectandpassit
alongtothedatasinkforpossibleadditionalprocessing.

Convolutional Codes
Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to give an introduction to convolutional codes as a subclass of
linear codes. Our aim in this chapter is to cover the background which is required for the
forthcoming subjects in the rest of this book. We start with basic definitions and study the
encoder structure of the convolutional codes by presenting different approaches. Then, we
consider the distance structure and present the generating functions to find the distance profile
for these codes. The Viterbi algorithm, as a maximum likelihood decoding technique for
convolutional codes, is explained. Finally, we use the generating functions to obtain an upper
bound on the bit error probability of the maximum likelihood decoding of convolutional codes.
Chapter 3 CONVOLUTIONAL
CODES The purpose of this chapter is to give an introduction to
convolutional codes as a subclass of linear codes. Our aim in this chapter is to
cover the background which is required for the forthcoming subjects in the rest of
this book. We start with basic definitions and study the encoder structure ofthe
convolutional codes by presenting different approaches. Then, we consider the
distance struc-ture and present the generating functions to find the distance profile
for these codes. The Viterbi algorithm, as a maximum likelihood decoding
technique for convolutional codes, is explained. Finally, we use the generating
functions to obtain an upper bound on the bit error probability of the maximum
likelihood decoding of convolutional codes. 3.1 BASIC
STRUCTURE A binary! rate kin convolutional encoder with II memory
elements is a linear finite-state machine, which at any given time unit, accepts k
input bits, makes a transition from its state at that time unit to one of the 2V possible
successor states and outputs n bits. Examples of rate 1/2 and rate 2/3 convolutional
codes with II = 2 are shown in Figure 3.1 and Figure 3.2, respectively. We shall
pursue these examples to develop various representations and properties of
convolutional codes. Many approaches can be used in studying convolutional
codes. Among them we discuss three approaches, namely, the generator polynomial
matrix ap-proach, the state diagram approach, and the trellis approach. These
approaches 1 Throughout tIllS chapter we consider linear binary convolutional codes defined over
GF(2). However, the results can be generalized to nonbinary codes. 73 S. H. Jamali et al., Coded-
Modulation Techniques for Fading Channels© Kluwer Academic Publishers 1994
74 CONVOLUTIONAL CODES c( 1) n (1) a n T T output input (2) c n

Figure 3.1: Rate 1/2 convolutional code with v = 2.

will be employed in discussion of the trellis-coded modulation schemes in the
rest of this book. 3.1.1 Generator Polynomial Matrix Consider the rate 1/2
convolutional encoder shown in Figure 3.1. It consists of a 2-stage shift register
and two modulo-2 adders. The input bits are continuously entered into the left
end of the register, and for each new input bit, two output bits are transmitted
over the channel. These bits depend not only on the present input bit but also on
the two previous input bits, stored in the shift register. For the encoder of Figure
3.1, the output bits can be expressed as (3.1) where subscript n denotes the nth
time interval and ffi shows the modulo-2 addition. Equation (3.1) describes the
encoding process of the convolutional code using time-domain operations. An
alternative description can be obtained using transform-domain involving
polynomial arithmetic [74]. A polynomial G(D) of degree n over a field F, is
expressed as where the coefficients {gi}, i = 0, 1, ... , n, are elements of the field
F and D is an indeterminate. The indeterminate D can be interpreted as a delay
operator. For the polynomials defined over GF(2) the coefficients, {gil, are
either zero or one and the addition operation is a modulo-2 addition.