INTRODUCTION

Modulation is the process of facilitating the transfer of information over a medium.Modulation is essential for transmission of two or more signals simultaneously. It avoids any interference between the two signals and also ensures that signal errors are avoided during transmission. The move to digital modulation provides more information capacity, compatibility with digital data services, higher data security, better quality communications, and quicker system availability. Over the past few years a major transition has occurred from simple Analog Amplitude Modulation (AM) and Frequency/Phase Modulation (FM/PM) to new digital modulation techniques. Examples of digital modulation include PSK (Phase Shift Keying) QPSK (Quadrature Phase Shift Keying) QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) FSK (Frequency Shift Keying)

In digital wireless communication systems, the modulating signal may be represented as a time sequence of symbols or pulses, where each symbol has m finite states. Each symbol represents n bits of information where n = log2m bits/symbol.

Advantages of Digital over Analog

Greater noise immunity (due to its finite process) Robustness to channel impairments Easier multiplexing of various forms of information like voice, data, video Security by using coding techniques to avoid jamming Accommodation of digital error control codes which detect and/or correct transmission errors Equalization to improve the performance of overall communication link Supports complex signal conditioning and processing methods

Factors that influence Digital Modulation

High spectral efficiency The performance of a modulation scheme is often measured in terms of its power efficiency and bandwidth efficiency The power efficiency is the ability of a modulation technique to preserve the fidelity (acceptable BER) of the digital message at low power levels. Because of signal attenuation, it is necessary to move the baseband signal spectrum to reside at a much higher frequency band centred at fc, called the carrier frequency, in the radio spectrum

QPSK MODULATION In Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) two sinusoids (sin and cos) are taken as basis functions for modulation. Modulation is achieved by varying the phase of the basis functions depending on the message symbols. In QPSK, modulation is symbol based, where one symbol contains 2 bits.

QPSK MODULATOR

QPSK DEMODULATOR

Advantages of QPSK over BPSK are as follows

In the same frequency band it is possible to transmit twice more information, while the number of errors and the Eb/No relation are the same.

SIMULATION IN MATLAB FROM THE FIRST PRINCIPLE

For the QPSK modulation, a series of binary input message bits are generated using randn function. The generated binary bits are combined in terms of two bits and QPSK symbols are generated. For QPSK modulation AWGN channel can be modeled as

Where y is the received signal at the input of the QPSK receiver, x is the complex modulated signal transmitted through the channel &a is a channel amplitude scaling factor. For the channel model randn function in Matlab is used to generate the noise term. This function generates noise with unit variance and zero mean.

For AWGN the noise variance in terms of noise power spectral density (N 0) is given by,

QPSK receiver employs two threshold detectors that detect real (inphase arm) and imaginary part (quadrature arm). The detected signals are sent through a parallel to serial converter (achieved by "reshape" function in MATLAB).

The Eb/N0 Vs BER Curve for QPSK and BPSK are identical. This is because QPSK actually consists of two orthogonal BPSK systems. Since the two individual BPSK systems are orthogonal, they don't interfere with each other. That is why the BER curved for QPSK and BPSK are identical.

SIMULATION RESULT

BER PLOT OF QPSK IN MATLAB

Phase Shift Keying (16-PSK)

Phase modulation works by modulating the phase of the signal, i.e. changing the rate at which the point moves around the circle. In M-ary PSK system, inphase and quadrature components of the modulated signals are interrelated in such a way that envelope is constrained to remain constant. This constraint manifests itself in a circular constellation for the message points.

Constellation of 16-PSK modulation

SIMULATION IN MATLAB
As can be seen from the figure above, due to the addition of noise, the transmitted symbol gets spreaded. However, if the received symbol is present within the boundary defined by the magenta lines, then the symbol will be demodulated correctly. For calculation of BER, the objective is to find the probability that the phase of the received symbol lies within this boundary defined by the magenta lines i.e. from to .

BER plot of 16-PSK in MATLAB

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Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM)

QAM is a form of modulation which is widely used for modulating data signals onto a carrier used for radio communications. It is widely used because it offers advantages over other forms of data modulation such as PSK. Quadrature Amplitude Modulation, QAM is a signal in which two carriers shifted in phase by 90 degrees are modulated and the resultant output consists of both amplitude and phase variations. In view of the fact that both amplitude and phase variations are present it may also be considered as a mixture of amplitude and phase modulation.

Gray coded bit mapping for 16- QAM

Limitations of QAM
The first is that it is more susceptible to noise because the states are closer together so that a lower level of noise is needed to move the signal to a different decision point. The second limitation is also associated with the amplitude component of the signal. When a phase or frequency modulated signal is amplified in a radio transmitter, there is no need to use linear amplifiers, whereas when using QAM that contains an amplitude component, linearity must be maintained. Unfortunately linear amplifiers are less efficient and consume more power, and this makes them less attractive for mobile applications.

SIMULATION MODEL
As can be seen from the constellation diagram, with Gray coded bit mapping, adjacent constellation symbols differ by only one bit. So, if the noise causes the constellation to cross the decision threshold, only 1 out of bits will be in error. Bit error rate for 16QAM is given by . The Matlab script performs the following: Generation of random binary sequence Assigning group of 4 bits to each 16-QAM constellation symbol per the Gray mapping Addition of white Gaussian Noise Demodulation of 16-QAM symbols and Counting the number of bit errors Running this for each value of Eb/No in steps of 1dB.

SIMULATION RESULT

BER plot of 16-QAM in MATLAB

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Comparing 16PSK & 16QAM for Bit Error Rate

Distance between the constellation points for 16-PSK

From the above figure we can see that the distance between the constellation points for 16-PSK modulation is given by

where

. Similarly we can calculates distance for 16-QAM, which is given by

Comparing both we get

The distance between the constellation points for 16QAM modulation is around 1.6 times the value for 16PSK modulation. More the distance between the constellations, lesser is the chance of a constellation point getting decoded incorrectly. This implies that for the same symbol error rate, 16QAM modulation requires lesser signal to noise ratio, when compared with 16PSK modulation.

SIMULATION RESULT
Comparing theoretical Bit error rate

Theoretical BER performance curve of 16-PSK & 16-QAM in MATLAB

 Comparing simulated Bit error rate of 16-QAM & 16-PSK

Simulated BER curve of 16-PSK & 16-QAM in MATLAB

CONCLUSION

From the simulation results it has proved that 16-QAM performs better than 16 PSK. We found that for the same bit error rate, 16QAM modulation requires around 5dB lesser signal to noise ratio, when compared with 16PSK modulation. This is because QAM achieves a greater distance between adjacent points in the I-Q plane by distributing the points more evenly. And in this way the points on the constellation are more distinct and data errors are reduced. Therefore, we prefer 16-QAM over 16-PSK. We have concluded that higher order modulation rates are able to offer much faster data rates and higher levels of spectral efficiency for the radio communications system, this comes at a price. The higher order modulation schemes are considerably less resilient to noise and interference. Plot of QPSK in MATLAB proved that QPSK performs better than BPSK as it uses half the bandwidth & also we can have more number of samples & the Error rate will be low in QPSK. Thus we can say that quadrature modulation techniques plays a central role in simulation of wireless communication systems and models for quadrature modulators and demodulators serve as building blocks for most other types of data modulators and demodulators.

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