Higher-order modulation

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Higher-order modulation is a type of digital modulation usually with an order of 4 or higher. Examples: quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK), and m-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (m-QAM).

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In electronics and telecommunications, modulation is the process of varying one or more properties of a periodic waveform, called the carrier signal, with a separate signal called the modulation signal that typically contains information to be transmitted. For example, the modulation signal might be an audio signal representing sound from a microphone, a video signal representing moving images from a video camera, or a digital signal representing a sequence of binary digits, a bitstream from a computer. The carrier is higher in frequency than the modulation signal. The purpose of modulation is to impress the information on the carrier wave, which is used to carry the information to another location. In radio communication the modulated carrier is transmitted through space as a radio wave to a radio receiver. Another purpose is to transmit multiple channels of information through a single communication medium, using frequency-division multiplexing (FDM). For example in cable television which uses FDM, many carrier signals, each modulated with a different television channel, are transported through a single cable to customers. Since each carrier occupies a different frequency, the channels do not interfere with each other. At the destination end, the carrier signal is demodulated to extract the information bearing modulation signal.

Quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) is the name of a family of digital modulation methods and a related family of analog modulation methods widely used in modern telecommunications to transmit information. It conveys two analog message signals, or two digital bit streams, by changing (modulating) the amplitudes of two carrier waves, using the amplitude-shift keying (ASK) digital modulation scheme or amplitude modulation (AM) analog modulation scheme. The two carrier waves of the same frequency are out of phase with each other by 90°, a condition known as orthogonality or quadrature. The transmitted signal is created by adding the two carrier waves together. At the receiver, the two waves can be coherently separated (demodulated) because of their orthogonality property. Another key property is that the modulations are low-frequency/low-bandwidth waveforms compared to the carrier frequency, which is known as the narrowband assumption.

Single-sideband modulation Type of modulation

In radio communications, single-sideband modulation (SSB) or single-sideband suppressed-carrier modulation (SSB-SC) is a type of modulation used to transmit information, such as an audio signal, by radio waves. A refinement of amplitude modulation, it uses transmitter power and bandwidth more efficiently. Amplitude modulation produces an output signal the bandwidth of which is twice the maximum frequency of the original baseband signal. Single-sideband modulation avoids this bandwidth increase, and the power wasted on a carrier, at the cost of increased device complexity and more difficult tuning at the receiver.

Baseband Signal that has a very narrow frequency range near zero

In telecommunications and signal processing, baseband is the range of frequencies occupied by a signal that has not been modulated to higher frequencies. Baseband signals typically originate from transducers, converting some other variable into an electrical signal. For example, the output of a microphone is a baseband signal that is an analog of the received audio. In conventional analog radio broadcasting the baseband audio signal is used, after processing, to modulate a separate RF carrier signal at a much higher frequency.

Phase-shift keying (PSK) is a digital modulation process which conveys data by changing (modulating) the phase of a constant frequency reference signal. The modulation is accomplished by varying the sine and cosine inputs at a precise time. It is widely used for wireless LANs, RFID and Bluetooth communication.

Quadrature may refer to:

8VSB is the modulation method used for broadcast in the ATSC digital television standard. ATSC and 8VSB modulation is used primarily in North America; in contrast, the DVB-T standard uses COFDM.

A satellite modem or satmodem is a modem used to establish data transfers using a communications satellite as a relay. A satellite modem's main function is to transform an input bitstream to a radio signal and vice versa.

Vector signal analyzer

A vector signal analyzer is an instrument that measures the magnitude and phase of the input signal at a single frequency within the IF bandwidth of the instrument. The primary use is to make in-channel measurements, such as error vector magnitude, code domain power, and spectral flatness, on known signals.

Constellation diagram

A constellation diagram is a representation of a signal modulated by a digital modulation scheme such as quadrature amplitude modulation or phase-shift keying. It displays the signal as a two-dimensional xy-plane scatter diagram in the complex plane at symbol sampling instants. The angle of a point, measured counterclockwise from the horizontal axis, represents the phase shift of the carrier wave from a reference phase. The distance of a point from the origin represents a measure of the amplitude or power of the signal.

In digital modulation, minimum-shift keying (MSK) is a type of continuous-phase frequency-shift keying that was developed in the late 1950s by Collins Radio employees Melvin L. Doelz and Earl T. Heald. Similar to OQPSK, MSK is encoded with bits alternating between quadrature components, with the Q component delayed by half the symbol period.

In a digitally modulated signal or a line code, symbol rate or modulation rate is the number of symbol changes, waveform changes, or signaling events across the transmission medium per unit of time. The symbol rate is measured in baud (Bd) or "symbols per second". In the case of a line code, the symbol rate is the pulse rate in pulses per second. Each symbol can represent or convey one or several bits of data. The symbol rate is related to the gross bit rate, expressed in "bits per second".

In-phase and quadrature components

In electrical engineering, a sinusoid with angle modulation can be decomposed into, or synthesized from, two amplitude-modulated sinusoids that are offset in phase by one-quarter cycle. All three functions have the same center frequency. Such amplitude modulated sinusoids are known as the in-phase and quadrature components. In some contexts it is more convenient to refer to only the amplitude modulation (baseband) itself by those terms.

The modulation order of a digital communication scheme is determined by the number of the different symbols that can be transmitted using it.

Polar modulation is analogous to quadrature modulation in the same way that polar coordinates are analogous to Cartesian coordinates. Quadrature modulation makes use of Cartesian coordinates, x and y. When considering quadrature modulation, the x axis is called the I (in-phase) axis, and the y axis is called the Q (quadrature) axis. Polar modulation makes use of polar coordinates, r (amplitude) and Θ (phase).

Carrier recovery

A carrier recovery system is a circuit used to estimate and compensate for frequency and phase differences between a received signal's carrier wave and the receiver's local oscillator for the purpose of coherent demodulation.

Amplitude and phase-shift keying

Amplitude and phase-shift keying (APSK) is a digital modulation scheme that conveys data by modulating both the amplitude and the phase of a carrier wave. In other words, it combines both amplitude-shift keying (ASK) and phase-shift keying (PSK). This allows for a lower bit error rate for a given modulation order and signal-to-noise ratio, at the cost of increased complexity, compared to ASK or PSK alone.

Differential phase is a kind of linearity distortion which affects the color hue in TV broadcasting.

Spatial modulation is a technique that enables modulation over space, across different antennas (radio) at a transmitter. Unlike multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) wireless, in spatial modulation, only a single antenna among all transmitting antennas is active and transmitting, while all other remaining transmitting antennas sit idle. The duty of the receiver is: to estimate the active antenna index at the transmitter and to decode the symbol sent by the transmitting antenna.