Modulation Demodulation

Ir. Muhamad Asvial, MSc., PhD

Center for Information and Communication Engineering Research (CICER)
Electrical Engineering Department - University of Indonesia
E-mail: [email protected]
http://www.ee.ui.ac.id/cicer

Slide 1

Introduction to Modulation and

Demodulation
The purpose of a communication system is to transfer information from a source to a destination.
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In practice, problems arise in baseband transmissions,

the major cases being: The image cannot be display ed. Your computer may not hav e enough memory to open the image, or the image may hav e been corrupted. Restart y our computer, and then open the file again. If the red x still appears, y ou may hav e to delete the image and then insert it again.

• Noise in the system – external noise

and circuit noise reduces the
signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio at the receiver
(Rx) input and hence reduces the
quality of the output.

• Such a system is not able to fully utilise the available bandwidth,

for example telephone quality speech has a bandwidth ≃ 3kHz, a
co-axial cable has a bandwidth of 100's of Mhz.
• Radio systems operating at baseband frequencies are very difficult.
• Not easy to network.

Slide 2

1
 What is Modulation?
In modulation, a message signal, which contains the information is used to control the
parameters of a carrier signal, so as to impress the information onto the carrier.

The Messages
The message or modulating signal may be either:
analogue – denoted by m(t)
digital – denoted by d(t) – i.e. sequences of 1's and 0's
The message signal could also be a multilevel signal, rather than binary; this is not
considered further at this stage.

The Carrier
The carrier could be a 'sine wave' or a 'pulse train'.
Consider a 'sine wave' carrier:

vc (t ) = Vc cos(ωct + φc )
• If the message signal m(t) controls amplitude – gives AMPLITUDE MODULATION AM
• If the message signal m(t) controls frequency – gives FREQUENCY MODULATION FM
• If the message signal m(t) controls phase- gives PHASE MODULATION PM or φM

Slide 3

Digital Modulation

• Considering now a digital message d(t):

• If the message d(t) controls amplitude – gives AMPLITUDE SHIFT KEYING ASK.
• If the message d(t) controls frequency – gives FREQUENCY SHIFT KEYING FSK.
• If the message d(t) controls phase – gives PHASE SHIFT KEYING PSK.
• In this discussion, d(t) is a binary or 2 level signal representing 1's and 0's

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• The types of modulation produced, i.e. ASK, FSK and PSK are sometimes described as binary
or 2 level, e.g. Binary FSK, BFSK, BPSK, etc. or 2 level FSK, 2FSK, 2PSK etc.
• Thus there are 3 main types of Digital Modulation:
ASK, FSK, PSK.

Slide 4

2
 Multi-Level Message Signals
As has been noted, the message signal need not be either analogue
(continuous) or binary, 2 level. A message signal could be multi-level or
m levels where each level would represent a discrete pattern of
'information' bits. For example, m = 4 levels

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Slide 5

What is Demodulation?

Demodulation is the reverse process (to modulation) to recover the message signal
m(t) or d(t) at the receiver.

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Slide 6

3
The image cannot be display ed. Your computer may not hav e enough memory to open the image, or the image may hav e been corrupted. Restart y our computer, and then open the file again. If the red x still appears, y ou may hav e to delete the image and then insert it again.

Slide 7

Slide 8

4
 Slide 9

Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK)

Baseband
Data

1 0 0 1 0
ASK
modulated
signal

Acos(ωt) Acos(ωt)

• Pulse shaping can be employed to remove spectral spreading

• ASK demonstrates poor performance, as it is heavily affected by
noise, fading, and interference

Slide 10 10

5
 Frequency Shift Keying (FSK)

Baseband
Data

1 0 0 1
BFSK
modulated
signal

f1 f0 f0 f1

where f0 =Acos(ωc-∆ω)t and f1 =Acos(ωc+∆ω)t

• Example: The ITU-T V.21 modem standard uses FSK

• FSK can be expanded to a M-ary scheme, employing multiple
frequencies as different states

Slide 11

Phase Shift Keying (PSK)

Baseband
Data

1 0 0 1
BPSK
modulated
signal

s1 s0 s0 s1

where s0 =-Acos(ωct) and s1 =Acos(ωct)

• Major drawback – rapid amplitude change between symbols due to

phase discontinuity, which requires infinite bandwidth. Binary Phase
Shift Keying (BPSK) demonstrates better performance than ASK and
BFSK
• BPSK can be expanded to a M-ary scheme, employing multiple phases
and amplitudes as different states

Slide 12

6
 Differential Modulation

• In the transmitter, each symbol is modulated

relative to the previous symbol and
modulating signal, for instance in BPSK 0
= no change, 1 = +1800
• In the receiver, the current symbol is
demodulated using the previous symbol as a
reference. The previous symbol serves as an
estimate of the channel. A no-change
condition causes the modulated signal to
remain at the same 0 or 1 state of the
previous symbol.

Slide 13

DPSK

• Differential modulation is theoretically 3dB

poorer than coherent. This is because the
differential system has 2 sources of error: a
corrupted symbol, and a corrupted reference
(the previous symbol)
• DPSK = Differential phase-shift keying: In the
transmitter, each symbol is modulated
relative to (a) the phase of the immediately
preceding signal element and (b) the data
being transmitted.

Slide 14

7
 Demodulation & Detection

• Demodulation
– Is process of removing the carrier signal to obtain
the original signal waveform
• Detection – extracts the symbols from the
waveform
– Coherent detection
– Non-coherent detection

Slide 15
15

Coherent Detection

• An estimate of the channel phase and

attenuation is recovered. It is then possible to
reproduce the transmitted signal and
demodulate.
• Requires a replica carrier wave of the same
frequency and phase at the receiver.
• The received signal and replica carrier are
cross-correlated using information contained
in their amplitudes and phases.
• Also known as synchronous detection

Slide 16

8
 Coherent Detection

• Carrier recovery methods include

– Pilot Tone (such as Transparent Tone in Band)
• Less power in the information bearing signal, High peak-
to-mean power ratio
– Carrier recovery from the information signal
• Applicable to
– Phase Shift Keying (PSK)
– Frequency Shift Keying (FSK)
– Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK)

Slide 17
17

Non-Coherent Detection

• Requires no reference wave; does not exploit

phase reference information (envelope
detection)
– Differential Phase Shift Keying (DPSK)
– Frequency Shift Keying (FSK)
– Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK)
– Non coherent detection is less complex than
coherent detection (easier to implement), but has
worse performance.

Slide 18

9
 Constellation diagram

= graphical representation of the complex

envelope of each possible symbol state
– The x-axis represents the in-phase component
and the y-axis the quadrature component of the
complex envelope
– The distance between signals on a constellation
diagram relates to how different the modulation
waveforms are and how easily a receiver can
differentiate between them.

Slide 19

QPSK Constellation Diagram

Q
Q

I I

Carrier phases
Carrier phases
{0, π/2, π, 3π/2}
{π/4, 3π/4, 5π/4, 7π/4}

• Quadrature Phase Shift Keying has twice the bandwidth

efficiency of BPSK since 2 bits are transmitted in a single
modulation symbol

Slide 20

10
 Types of QPSK
Q Q Q

I I I

Conventional QPSK Offset QPSK π/4 QPSK

• Conventional QPSK has transitions through zero (i.e. 1800 phase transition).
Highly linear amplifiers required.
• In Offset QPSK, the phase transitions are limited to 900, the transitions on the I
and Q channels are staggered.
• In π/4 QPSK the set of constellation points are toggled each symbol, so
transitions through zero cannot occur. This scheme produces the lowest
envelope variations.
• All QPSK schemes require linear power amplifiers

Slide 21

Distortions

Perfect channel White noise Phase jitter

Slide 22

11
 GMSK

• Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK) is a form of

continuous-phase FSK in which the phase change is
changed between symbols to provide a constant
envelope. Consequently it is a popular alternative to
QPSK
• The RF bandwidth is controlled by the Gaussian low-
pass filter bandwidth. The degree of filtering is
expressed by multiplying the filter 3dB bandwidth (B)
by the bit period of the transmission (T), i.e. by BT
• GMSK allows efficient class C non-linear amplifiers to
be used

Slide 23

Modulation Spectra

• The Nyquist bandwidth

Relative Magnitude (dB)

Adjacent is the minimum

Nyquist Minimum bandwidth that can
Bandwidth Channel represent a signal
(within an acceptable
error)
• The spectrum occupied
by a signal should be as
close as practicable to
that minimum,
otherwise adjacent
channel interference
occur
• The spectrum occupied
by a signal can be
Frequency reduced by application
of filters

Slide 24

12
 Bandwidth Efficiency
fb  E f 
= log 2  1 + b b 
W  ηW 
f b = capacity (bits per second)
W = bandwidth of the modulating baseband signal (Hz)
Eb = energy per bit
η = noise power density (watts/Hz)
Thus
Eb f b = total signal power
ηW = total noise power
fb
= bandwidth use efficiency
W
= bits per second per Hz

Slide 25

Comparison of Modulation Types

Modulation Bandwidth Log2(C/B) Error-free Eb/No
Format efficiency C/B
16 PSK 4 2 18dB
16 QAM 4 2 15dB
8 PSK 3 1.6 14.5dB
4 PSK 2 1 10dB
4 QAM 2 1 10dB
BFSK 1 0 13dB
BPSK 1 0 10.5dB

Slide 26

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