Digital Modulation

From: Singal; Lathi & Ding

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Digital Modulation

• Digital modulation: variation of phase, amplitude, or frequency in

accordance with digital signals (which can be binary or multi-level)

• Digital Modulation enables transmission of digitally-modulated analog

carrier signals in bandpass communication systems

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Digital data over analog channels
• Digital pulses have infinite bandwidth

• However, communication channels are bandlimited

• Therefore, digital data have to be converted into forms suitable for bandlimited
channels.

Rectangular pulse (a) and its Fourier transform (b) 3

Digital data over analog channels

Unit impulse (a) and its Fourier transform (b)

Constant dc signal (a) and its Fourier transform (b) 4

Digital data over analog channels

Band-limiting in frequency leads to spreading in time 5

Raised cosine filter
• Filtering leads to symbol spread in time domain leading to inter-symbol
interference
• To avoid the unreasonable requirement of having non-overlapping symbols to
avoid interference, the time domain pulses can be designed so that they
contribute no interference at the decision-making instants.
• Raised cosine filters and square root raised cosine filters are some of the filters
that meet these requirements

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Reducing inter-symbol interference (ISI)
• Filtering leads to symbol spread in time domain leading to inter-symbol
interference
• To avoid the unreasonable requirement of having non-overlapping symbols to
avoid interference, the time domain pulses can be designed so that they
contribute no interference at the decision-making instants.
• Raised cosine filters and square root raised cosine filters are some of the filters
that meet these requirements

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Reducing inter-symbol interference (ISI)

Minimum bandwidth pulse satisfying requirement for non-interference

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Digital data over analog channels

1+𝑟 𝑅𝑏
More practical realization (raised cosine filter) – baseband bandwidth 2
0 ≤ 𝑟 ≤ 1, 𝑅𝑏 (= 𝑓𝑏 ) is the bit rate
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The passband – after modulation

Spectral shifting by amplitude modulation

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Digital data over analog channels

Signal transmission through a Linear Time Invariant (LTI) system. Systems

(including transmission channels, are generally non-linear but linear
approximations can sometimes provide sufficiently good results) 11
Basic modulation techniques

Carrier signal: 𝑣𝑐 𝑡 = 𝑉𝑐 sin 2𝜋𝑓𝑐 𝑡 + 𝜃

• ASK: varies 𝑉𝑐 in proportion to discrete digital levels

• FSK: varies 𝑓𝑐 in proportion to discrete digital levels

• PSK: varies 𝜃 in proportion to discrete digital levels

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Types of Digital Modulation
• ASK and its variants such as binary ASK and M-ary ASK

• FSK and its variants such as minimum shift keying (MSK) and Gaussian MSK
(GMSK)

• PSK and its variants such as binary PSK (BPSK), differential BPSK (DPSK),
multilevel PSK and Quadrature PSK (QPSK)

• Combination of some of the above such as ASK and PSK giving quadrature
amplitude modulation (QAM), for instance.
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 Design features of Digital Modulation
• The design features form the basis upon which the modulation techniques are
evaluated when choosing a technique most suited for an application
• These features are
• Maximum error rate
• Minimum transmitted power
• Maximum utilization of channel bandwidth
• Minimum probability of symbol error
• Maximum resistance to interfering signals
• Minimum system complexity
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 Rate metrics
• Bit rate: rate of change of bits [unit: bits per second (bps)]

• Baud rate: rate of change of signaling element [unit: symbols per second]

• Spectral efficiency: rate of change of bits per unit frequency [unit: bps/Hz]

• Bit error rate (BER) and symbol error rate (SER): portion of transmitted
bits (or symbols) that are received in error.

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 Digital modulation schemes
• Some of the schemes we will look at include:
• ASK
• FSK, minimum shift keying (MSK), Gaussian MSK (GMSK)
• PSK, differential binary PSK (DBPSK), quadrature PSK (QPSK), offset
𝜋
QPSK (OPSK), −QPSK, multilevel PSK
4

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Amplitude shift keying (ASK)

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Amplitude shift keying (ASK)
• Amplitude of the analog sinusoidal carrier is varied to represent
digital signals while phase and frequency remain unchanged
• Mathematically

• It is also known as on-off keying (OOK) – due to presence and absence

of a waveform depending on the symbol being transmitted.

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ASK – waveforms
• waveforms

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ASK – Bandwidth
• Spectrum without filtering

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ASK – Bandwidth
• Dependent on the filter used to shape the modulated waveforms

• Generally given by 𝐵𝐴𝑆𝐾 = 1 + 𝑟 𝑓𝑏

• where the bit rate 𝑓𝑏 = 1/𝑇𝑏 and typically 0 ≤ 𝑟 ≤ 1 (see the raised cosine
filter)

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ASK – average probability of error
Average probability of bit error, 𝑃𝑒𝑏
𝑁0
(where 𝐸𝑏 is bit energy and is noise PSD)
2

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 ASK – modulator

UP-NRZ – unipolar non-return to zero

Balanced modulator – suppresses the carrier
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 ASK – demodulators
a. Coherent demodulator

Integrator operates every symbol duration (for averaging)

The demodulator require synchronization:
- Phase synchronization (for the carrier)
- Timing synchronization (for the decision device)

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ASK – demodulators
b. Non-coherent demodulator

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ASK – pros and cons
Advantages
• Simple to design, generate, and detect
• Low bandwidth (compared to FSK for example)
• Average energy required for transmission is low

Disadvantages
• Susceptible to noise and interference
• Inefficient (low data rate per spectrum usage)
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ASK – some applications

- Voice

- Telemetry

- Optical fiber (LED-based)

- Wireless IR transmissions

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Frequency Shift Keying (FSK)

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Frequency shift keying (FSK)

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Frequency shift keying (FSK)
Binary FSK (BFSK) signal

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Frequency shift keying (FSK)
BFSK Bandwidth and PSD waveform
Minimum bandwidth:
- difference between carrier frequencies for a 1 and a 0 + the baud rate
- Bit rate is equal to baud rate in BFSK

Illustrate:

Question: use MATLAB to plot the spectral representation of a BFSK signal

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Frequency shift keying (FSK)
PSD
Minimum bandwidth:
- difference between carrier frequencies for a 1 and a 0 + the baud rate
- Bit rate is equal to baud rate in BFSK

From PSD plot:

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Frequency shift keying (FSK)
Average probability of symbol error for coherent BFSK

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Frequency shift keying (FSK)
BFSK Modulator

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Frequency shift keying (FSK)
BFSK Demodulator (coherent)

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Frequency shift keying (FSK)
BFSK Demodulator (non-coherent)

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Frequency shift keying (FSK)
BFSK Demodulator (using PLL to track 𝑓1 and 𝑓2 – i.e. 1 and 0)

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Frequency shift keying (FSK)
Advantages
• Constant transmission power (no amplitude variation)
• Better noise immunity than ASK, hence:
• higher probability of error-free reception
• Some circuits relatively easy to implement

Disadvantages
• Bandwidth inefficient (larger bandwidth requirement)
• Poorer error performance than other modulation techniques such as PSK
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M-ary Frequency shift keying (MFSK)

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Phase shift keying (PSK)

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Phase shift keying (PSK)

Can be binary (BPSK) or M-ary (MPSK)

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 Phase shift keying (PSK)
Mathematical model of a BPSK signal

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 Phase shift keying (PSK)
Time domain waveforms

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 Phase shift keying (PSK)
Power spectral density

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 Phase shift keying (PSK)
Power spectral density and probability of error

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 Phase shift keying (PSK)
Power spectral density and probability of error

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 Phase shift keying (PSK)
Example

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 Phase shift keying (PSK)
modulator

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 Phase shift keying (PSK)
Coherent demodulator

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 Phase shift keying (PSK) – pros and cons
Advantage
- Better noise immunity than ASK and FSK, hence
- Lower error probability
- Better bandwidth efficiency (faster, reliable transmission of data per unit
frequency)
Disadvantage
- Only coherent demodulation is possible, requiring carrier recovery circuits that
increase complexity

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 Phase shift keying (PSK)
comparison

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 Differential BPSK (DBPSK)

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Differential BPSK (DBPSK)

Phase shift is with reference to the previous bit.

DPSK and DQPSK (image from Wikipedia)

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Differential BPSK (DBPSK) - modulator
- Incoming bit XORed or XNORed with the preceding input to a BPSK modulator
- The first bit has no preceding bit; therefore, it is used as it is.

Modifying input to the BPSK modulator using an XOR gate

1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1

0° 0° 180° 0° 180° 180° 180° 180° 0° 180° 180° 0°

Changing carrier phase for 1s (XOR case)

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Differential BPSK (DPPSK) - modulator
- Incoming bit XORed or XNORed with the preceding input to a BPSK modulator
- The first bit has no preceding bit; therefore, it is used as it is.

𝑎[𝑘]

Modifying input to the BPSK modulator using an XNOR gate

Changing carrier phase for 0s (XNOR case)

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Differential BPSK (DBPSK) - modulator

Differential encoding

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 Differential BPSK (DBPSK) - Bandwidth
Equal to PSK/ASK
𝐵𝐷𝐵𝑃𝑆𝐾 = 1 + 𝑟 𝑓𝑏

Note the fastest change in the encoded baseband signal occurs after to 𝑇𝑏 , which would
make the signal bandwidth equal to PSK/ASK bandwidth.

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 Differential BPSK (DBPSK) - Demodulation
Non-coherent

0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0

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Differential BPSK (DBPSK) - Demodulation
An example of a more detailed non-coherent demodulator

- The input is band limited (using a BPF)

- Low pass filtering (using the integrator) required remove any high frequency components

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Differential BPSK (DBPSK) - Demodulation
An example of a coherent demodulator (referred to as Differentially Encoded PSK in the book we are using)

Coherent BPSK demodulator

DBPSK signal

Coherent detection
- Essentially a BPSK demodulator, after which a decoder is used to recover the transmitted sequence
- Notice the absence of this decoder in the noncoherent detection schemes

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Differential BPSK (DBPSK) – pros and cons
Coherent detection of DBPSK signal more reliable.
• Reason: difference in phase between two signaling elements determines the logic
condition of incoming data. Therefore, other than absolute phase, another
comparison is the phase of preceding decoding.

Advantages of DBPSK over PSK

• Can be detected using an envelop detector
• Simple to implement (when using envelope detection)
Disadvantages
• Less immunity to noise and interference (error in one bit affects the next)
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Example Differentially Encoded PSK (DEPSK)

(using XNOR to encode and decode)

- Repeat the same example using XOR to encode and to decode

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