ALPHA COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY

DIGITAL MODULATION TECHNIQUES

Basic Communication System Amplitude Shift Keying Frequency Shift Keying Phase Shift Keying

Digital transmission is the transmission of electri-
cal pulses. Digital information is binary in nature
in that it has only two possible states 1 or 0. Se-
quences of bits encode data (e.g., text characters).
Digital signals are commonly referred to as base-
band signals.
In modulation, a message signal, which contains
the information is used to control the parameters
of a high frequency carrier signal, so as to impress
the information onto the carrier.
Modulated signal is called pass-band signals.
There are three basic modulation techniques:
Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK)
Frequency Shift Keying (FSK)
Phase Shift Keying (PSK)
BASK is implemented by changing the amplitude
of a carrier signal to reflect amplitude levels in the
digital signal.
As ASK is highly affected by additive noise, it is
least preferable in case of AWGN channel.
BFSK is implemented by changing the frequency
of a carrier signal to reflect amplitude levels in the
digital signal.
For, power limited systems, FSK is more preferred
compared to PSK.
For, MFSK modulation, required bandwidth is
given by,
And the Euclidean distance between signal points
is given by,
BPSK is implemented by changing the phase of a
carrier signal to reflect amplitude levels in the
digital signal.
For, bandwidth limited systems, PSK is more pre-
ferred compared to FSK.
For, MPSK modulation, required bandwidth is
given by,
And the Euclidean distance between signal points
is given by,

Quadrature Amplitude Modulation Minimum Shift keying Comparision of Modulation Techniques (In Terms of BER)
Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) is a Minimum Shift Keying (MSK) is a continuous BER for various modulation techniques,
Multi-level (M-ary) Phase and Amplitude Modula- phase modulation Modulation BER
tion.
Technique
For M=4, 16QAM has the
BASK
largest distance between
points, but requires very linear
amplification. 16PSK has less BPSK
stringent linearity require-
ments, but has less spacing be-
tween constellation points, and BFSK

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS & COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING