Third Year Class: First Semester 2019-2020 (Lecture # 7) Dr.

Montadar Abas Taher

Department of Communications Engineering, College of

Engineering, University of Diyala

Digital Communication I
Lecture # 7
Digital Modulation Techniques
ASK, PSK, FSK, QPSK, DPSK, DEPSK, MSK, M-ary-FSK, M-ary-PSK,
QAM, M-ary-QAM
Digital Modulation:
 provides more information capacity,
 High data security,
 Quicker system availability with great quality communication.
 Hence, digital modulation techniques have a greater demand, for their capacity to convey
larger amounts of data than analog modulation techniques.
 There are many types of digital modulation techniques and their combinations, depending
upon the need.
ASK – Amplitude Shift Keying
 The amplitude of the resultant output depends upon the input data whether it should be a
zero level or a variation of positive and negative, depending upon the carrier frequency.
FSK – Frequency Shift Keying
 The frequency of the output signal will be either high or low, depending upon the input
data applied.
PSK – Phase Shift Keying
The phase of the output signal gets shifted depending upon the input. These are mainly of two
types, namely Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK) and Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK),
according to the number of phase shifts. The other one is Differential Phase Shift Keying
(DPSK), which changes the phase according to the previous value.
M-ary Encoding: M-ary Encoding techniques are the methods where more than two bits are
made to transmit simultaneously on a single signal. This helps in the reduction of bandwidth.
The types of M-ary techniques are:-
1. M-ary ASK
2. M-ary FSK
3. M-ary PSK

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Third Year Class: First Semester 2019-2020 (Lecture # 7) Dr. Montadar Abas Taher

Amplitude-Shift Keying (ASK):

 ASK represents digital data as variations in the amplitude of a carrier signal.
 For example, the transmitter could send the carrier ( ) to represent a logic 1,
 While using the carrier ( ) to represent logic 0.
 This is shown in the diagram below.
 The receiver detects the amplitude of the carrier to recover the original bit stream.

A special case of ASK is when a logic 1 is represented by ( ) (i.e., the presence of a

carrier) and a logic 0 is represented by a zero voltage (i.e., the absence of a carrier).

This special case is called On-Off Keying (OOK) and is shown below.

Notice that you can visualize ASK as the process of Amplitude Modulation (AM) using a “Polar
NRZ” digital baseband message signal. In other words, we say that ASK is the result of
multiplying a binary Polar NRZ signal ( ) (with appropriate DC shift) times a sinusoidal
carrier. This is shown in the diagram below:

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Third Year Class: First Semester 2019-2020 (Lecture # 7) Dr. Montadar Abas Taher

 In addition, since ASK is a special case of AM modulation, the bandwidth of ASK is

centered around the carrier frequency , where is the bandwidth of the Polar NRZ
signal.
 Since the bandwidth of Polar NRZ is equal to the data bit rate ( ) of the bit stream to be
sent, the bandwidth of ASK is (Hz).
 The following is a sketch of the PSD for an ASK signal

Frequency-shift keying (FSK):

In FSK the instantaneous frequency of the carrier signal is shifted between two possible
frequency values termed the mark frequency (representing a logic 1) and the space frequency
(representing a logic 0). This is shown in the diagram below.

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Third Year Class: First Semester 2019-2020 (Lecture # 7) Dr. Montadar Abas Taher

 Since FSK is a special case of FM modulation, the bandwidth of FSK is given by

Carson’s rule which says that , where is the bandwidth of the Polar
NRZ signal (equal to (the bit rate)).
 Hence, the bandwidth of FSK is (Hz).
 In addition, all modulator and demodulator circuits for FM are still applicable for FSK.
 FSK has several advantages over ASK due to the fact that the carrier has a constant
amplitude.
 These are the same advantages present in FM which include: immunity to non-linearities,
immunity to rapid fading, immunity to adjacent channel interference, and the ability to
exchange SNR for bandwidth.
 FSK was used in early slow dial-up modems.

Properties of FSK:
- Constant or non-constant envelope depends on filtering.
- Insensitive to channel fluctuations.
- Doppler and carrier phase error sensitive.
- Power efficient for the case of orthogonal M-FSK.
- Can be coherently and non-coherently detected.
- Currently most popular format.

Phase-shift keying (PSK):

 In PSK, the data is conveyed by changing the phase of the carrier wave.
 One possible representation (called Binary Phase-Shift Keying or BPSK) is to send
 logic 1 as a cosine signal with zero phase shift and a
 logic 0 as a cosine signal but with a 180° phase shift.
 We say in this case that the BPSK signal can assume one of two possible symbols: 0° and
180°. This case is shown in the following Figure.

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Third Year Class: First Semester 2019-2020 (Lecture # 7) Dr. Montadar Abas Taher

BPSK is a special case of PM, the bandwidth of PSK is , where is the bandwidth
for the polar NRZ signal and since the sinusoidal carrier signal does not change its
frequency. Hence, the bandwidth of BPSK is (Hz).

 A convenient way to represent PSK modulation is using a .

 A constellation diagram consists of a group of points.
 For example, for BPSK, in which each bit is represented by one symbol ( ) or
( )),
 In this case, (BPSK) The constellation diagram consists of two points.
 These two points have the same amplitude , but they are apart.
 Logic 1 corresponds to ( ),
 Logic 0 corresponds to ( ).

 Another common example of PSK is Quadrature (or Quaternary) Phase-Shift Keying

(QPSK).
 QPSK uses four possible phases for the carrier (45°, 135°, 225°, 315°) but with the same
carrier amplitude,
 With four phases, QPSK can encode two bits per one symbol

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Third Year Class: First Semester 2019-2020 (Lecture # 7) Dr. Montadar Abas Taher

 Notice that BPSK can also be thought of as a special case of DSB-SC in which the Polar
NRZ signal DSB-SC modulates a sinusoidal carrier. This is because multiplying a carrier
by positive and negative values switches its phase by 180°.
 You can imagine QPSK as a special case of Phase Modulation (PM) in which the
baseband message signal ( ) is a digital M-ary signal (with M = 4).
 In this case, the bandwidth of the M-ary baseband signal is ,
which means that the bandwidth of the QPSK signal is instead of
for BPSK.
 Hence, QPSK can be used to double the data rate compared to a BPSK system while
maintaining the same bandwidth of the modulated signal.
 Notice that any number of phases may be used to construct a PSK constellation.
 Usually, 8-PSK is the highest order PSK constellation deployed in practice.
 See the following Figure; in this case, each carrier symbol represents three bits.

Example: Find the bandwidth of an 8-PSK modulated signal if the data bit rate is 100 kbit/s.
Solution:

For 8-PSK:

( )

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Third Year Class: First Semester 2019-2020 (Lecture # 7) Dr. Montadar Abas Taher

Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM):

 QAM is a modulation scheme which conveys data by modulating the amplitude of two
carrier waves.
 These two waves (a cosine and a sine) are out of phase with each other by 90° and are
thus called quadrature carriers — hence the name of the scheme.
 Both analog and digital QAM are possible.
 Analog QAM was used in NTSC and PAL television systems, where the I- and Q-
signals carry the components of chrominance (color) information.
 Digital QAM, on the other hand, is constructed using two M-ary baseband signals (called
( ) and ( )) modulating the two quadrature carriers.
 For example, in 16-QAM both ( ) and ( ) are 4-ary digital baseband signals, which
means each one of them can assume one of four possibilities.
 This results in 4×4 = 16 possible carrier symbols as shown in the constellation diagram
below.
 Hence, 16-QAM uses 16 symbols, with each symbol representing a specific four-bit
pattern.

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Third Year Class: First Semester 2019-2020 (Lecture # 7) Dr. Montadar Abas Taher

Example: To send the bit sequence 100101110000 using 16-QAM, draw the signal and wave
voltage levels according to the following constellation diagram.

Solution: The bit stream is split into 4-bit groups, with each 4-bit pattern affecting ( ) and
( ) as shown in the figure below.

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Third Year Class: First Semester 2019-2020 (Lecture # 7) Dr. Montadar Abas Taher

 Notice that the baud rate (symbol rate) of the resulting 16-QAM signal is ⁄ that of the
data bit rate.
 This is why the bandwidth of 16-QAM is .
 You can see that this is correct because the bandwidth of each one of the 4-ary signals is
(one symbol per four bits).
 Performing DSB-SC modulation for each one of these signals (i.e., QAM) results in a
total bandwidth of ( ) .

Example: Find the bandwidth of a 16-QAM modulated signal if the data bit rate is 8 Mbit/s.

Solution:
For 16-QAM:

( )

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Third Year Class: First Semester 2019-2020 (Lecture # 7) Dr. Montadar Abas Taher

 In QAM, the constellation points are usually arranged in a square grid with equal vertical
and horizontal spacing called rectangular QAM.
 The number of points in the grid is usually a power of 2 (2, 4, 8, 16...).
 The most common forms of QAM are 16-QAM, 64-QAM, 128-QAM and 256-QAM.
 By moving to higher-order constellations, it is possible to transmit more bits per symbol,
which reduces bandwidth.
 However, if the mean energy of the constellation is to remain the same, the points must
be closer together and are thus more susceptible to noise; this results in a higher bit error
rate (BER).
 Hence, higher order QAM can deliver more data less reliably than lower-order QAM
unless, of course, the SNR is increased.

Example: Find the bandwidth of a 64-QAM modulated signal if the data bit rate is 8 Mbit/s.

Solution:

For 64-QAM: ( )

 Rectangular QAM constellations are, in general, sub-optimal in the sense that they do not
maximally space the constellation points for a given energy.
 However, they have the considerable advantage that they are easier to generate and
demodulated using simple hardware.
 Non-square constellations achieve marginally better performance but are harder to
modulate and demodulate.

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Third Year Class: First Semester 2019-2020 (Lecture # 7) Dr. Montadar Abas Taher

 In practical systems, M-ary signals are shaped using a Raised-Cosine Pulse before
modulating the two-quadrature carriers.
 In such case, the bandwidth of QAM (or PSK) becomes ( ) instead
of just
 Here β is called Roll-off factor of the raised-cosine pulse.

Example: The constellation diagram shown below is the one used in the V.32bis dial-up
modem. This modem provides 14.4 kbps using only 2400-baud rate. Calculate the number of
constellation points from these numbers. Assume there is one extra bit as redundancy for
correction.

Solution:

This means that the number of data bits-per-symbol is

Since there is one bit for redundancy, then, total number of bits

Hence, constellation diagram points

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