Quadrature Amplitude Modulation

Forrest Sedgwick
UC Berkeley EECS Dept.
EE290F
October 2003

Analog vs Digital

Information Theory vs Signal Analysis

Discrete Levels vs Analogous Representation

KEY BENEFIT

Sacrifice arbitrarily precise representation of signal

Gain arbitrary degree of reproducibility of given signal
Discrete information can be transmitted with arbitrarily low
error rates EVEN ON A NOISY CHANNEL

Digital information content measured in units of bits,

decimals, or nats

Shannons Channel Capacity

Channel capacity C (bits/sec)

is the speed at which
information can travel over a
channel with an arbitrarily low
error rate i.e. when a system
is transmitting bits at or below
C then for any BER e>0 there
exists a code with block
length n which will provide a
BER < e.

C W log 1
N 0W
Assumes noise is thermal

Gaussian and White

www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/
Mathematicians/Shannon.html

Modulation

All channels consist of some continuous parameter

Must map discrete states onto continuous property
Must have a decision circuit to map the state of the
modulated channel into a discrete state
As number of levels or states M the behavior of
the digital system does not approach that of an
analog system, due to the decision circuit

Number of Levels

Digital communications relies on a finite number of

discrete levels
Minimum number of levels is two (binary code)
Shannon Capacity helps determine optimum number
of levels for a given bandwidth, SNR, and BER

Eb

r log 1 r
N0

C
r
W

Limits on Communication Channels

Eb

r log 1 r
N0

Two types of
communication channels
r<<1 Power Limited

High dimensionality
signaling schemes
Binary

r>>1 Bandwidth Limited

Low dimensionality
Multilevel

Proakis and Salehi, pp. 738

Modulation Scheme

A channel with lowpass frequency characteristics is

called baseband. Digital information is transmitted
directly

Ex. Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM)

A channel far removed from DC (like optical) is called

a bandpass channel
Transmission on a bandpass channel requires
modulation of a carrier

Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK)

Phase Shift Keying (PSK)
Frequency Shift Keying (FSK
Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM)

Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK)

Amplitude of carrier wave is modulated

Equivalent BER vs SNR to baseband PAM

Proakis and Salehi, pp. 306

Angle Modulation (PSK and FSK)

Frequency is time derivative of phase, PSK

and FSK are somewhat equivalent

Proakis and Salehi, pp. 332

PSK: Digital Angle Modulation

Usually in digital communications PSK is chosen over

FSK
Easier to create multilevel codes
Possibility of using differential phase shift keying (DPSK)

Uses phase shifts relative to previous bit

Eliminates need for local oscillator at receiver
Use Gray Code to minimize effect of errors

Proakis and Salehi, pp. 631

Quadrature Amplitude Modulation

Amplitude and
Phase of carrier are
modulated
Discrete amplitudes
and phases form a
constellation
Can also think of
QAM as a
complex amplitude
modulation scheme
Proakis and Salehi, pp. 653

Constellations

Different constellations
require different SNR for a
given BER
(d) is lowest power by about
1dB (for given BER)
(a) and (b) are rectangular
Rectangular constellations
offer very simple modulation/
demodulation schemes

ASK two quadrature

carriers - same frequency
but 90 out of phase

Mix quadrature carriers

for output

Proakis and Salehi, pp. 653

QAM vs ASK (multilevel)

QAM has a tremendous advantage in noise performance

Energy in every bit (including zero)
Substantially more complex (coherent detection vs photodiode)

Proakis and Salehi, pp. 565

Proakis and Salehi, pp. 495

QAM vs PSK

4-QAM and 4-PSK

have same power
penalty
For k>4, k-QAM is
an improvement
over k-PSK

Proakis and Salehi, pp. 639

Applications of QAM

Used in bandwidth-limited applications

Modems: telephones have 3kHz bandwidth, excellent SNR

(20dB) => M-ary QAM
Cellular Telephones: Bandwidth is at a premium, very
expensive (However, POWER is also at a premium...)

Limitations

Almost always requires a highly stable local oscillator

In the optical domain this is very expensive
Possible (but difficult) to use differential phase keying
Performance limits still not reached for

Direct detection
Signal Dimensionality (DWDM)
Transmitter Power

References

John G. Proakis, Masoud Salehi, Communications

Systems Engineering, Prentice Hall 1994