Fundamentals of

Communications
(XE37ZKT), Part I

Advanced Digital Modulation

Techniques
Josef Dobeš

7th

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1 Outline
• Comparing the ASK, PSK, and FSK Spectra

– OOK and 4-ASK

– OOK Spectrum, derivation
– PSK Spectrum
– FSK Spectrum

• PSK and QAM

– 2-PSK and 4-PSK

– 8-PSK, 8-QAM, and 16-QAM
– Constellation diagrams

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• MSK and GMSK

– Minimum shift keying rule

– Smoothing phase
– Phase trellis
– GMSK

• π/4 DQPSK

• Noise Properties

• Adaptive Modulation and Coding

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2 Comparing ASK, PSK and FSK Spec-
tra
2.1 OOK (On-Off Keying) and 4-ASK (Time)

2.2 OOK (Spectrum)

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2.3 PSK (Time and Spectrum)

Highlights

• The main difference between the ASK and PSK modulations

consists in nonexistence of carrier in PSK

• For the signal drawn above, the carrier has lesser magnitude
than the 1st harmonic component. Why?

• The even harmonic components (2, 4, 6, ...) are zero for both
ASK and PSK.

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OOK DC and 1st harmonic components Let assume the se-
quence 1, 0, 1, 0, ... The DC component for such signal is
ZT ZT
1 1 2 1 T 1
f(t) dt = dt = =
T 0 T 0 T 2 2

The first harmonic component is (only the sine member of the Fourier
series is computed – the cosine member is zero on principle)
ZT ZT
2 2π 2 2 2π
f(t) sin t dt = sin t dt =
T 0 T T 0 T
 T
2 T 2π 2 2 1
− cos t = >
T 2π T 0 π 2

Therefore, the magnitude of the 1st harmonic component is greater

than the DC component for the most primitive OOK signal.

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2.4 FSK (Time and Spectrum)

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3 PSK and QAM

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Signal constellation It is convenient to represent phases on a pha-
sor diagram, known as the constellation, and each phase can be re-
solved into cosine (I, In-phase) and sine (Q, Quadrature) components.
The modulated signal can be written as

f(t) = I cos ωc t + Q sin ωc t

showing that it is equivalent to a pair of DSB signals of the same

carrier frequency, but with the two carriers in quadrature – so the
modulation is called QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation).

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4 MSK and GMSK
MSK (Minimum Shift Keying) is a variant of FSK with continuous
phase.
Generally, the bandwidth can be saved if ω0 and ω1 are close
together, but the closer they are the more difficult it is to distinguish
between the binary values. The closest practical spacing is when the
two frequencies differ by one half cycle in any bit period. If the time
per symbol is TB then the minimum frequency deviation is given by
1
∆f TB = ,
2
where ∆f = f0 − f1 .
To produce the narrowest possible spectrum, the symbol transitions
are arranged to be phase-continuous, since any sudden change in a
waveform will produce a wider spectrum.

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 However, a better way is to switch the frequencies at a maximum
(or, alternatively, at a minimum) – the derivatives are zero at these
points and therefore the switching is smooth.

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The phase can only take on one of two values, the values being 0
and π for t = 2kTb , and ±π/2 for t = (2k + 1)Tb (so called phase
trellis):

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4.1 GMSK
If the data pulses are shaped by suitable filtering before being applied
to the voltage controlled oscillator, we can obtain a smooth transi-
tion between the FSK frequencies, and this will reduce further the
bandwidth requirement. The optimum shape for the pulses is that of
a Gaussian function, and this results in GMSK.

If BG is the bandwidth of the shaping filter, and TB is the pulse

width, the parameter BG TB determines the bandwidth of the GMSK
signal. The “2G” or GSM mobile phone network uses GMSK modu-
lation with BG TB = 0.3.

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5 π/4 DQPSK
The signal constellation can be viewed as the superposition of two
QPSK signal constellations offset by 45 degrees relative to each other,
resulting in eight phases.
Emphasize that none of the ways goes across the origin.

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6 Noise Properties
The flexibility of digital modulation means that a modulation scheme
can be chosen to suit most channels. For the limited bandwidth of
a telephone channel, a bandwidth efficient scheme such as QAM or
QPSK is suitable. At the other extreme, m-FSK modulation can use
the wide bandwidth of the “space channel” to give good performance
at low signal-to-noise ratios approaching the Shannon limit of -1.6 dB

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7 Adaptive Modulation and Coding
Both QAM and QPSK are modulation techniques used in IEEE 802.11
(i.e., Wi-Fi), IEEE 802.16 (i.e., WiMAX) and 3G (i.e., WCDMA/
HSDPA) wireless technologies. The modulated signals are then de-
modulated at the receiver where the original message can be recov-
ered. The use of adaptive modulation allows wireless technologies
to optimize, yielding higher throughputs while also covering long dis-
tances.

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