Medios de transmisión y normatividad

“Modulación y Demodulación”
Técnicas de modulación para el tipo de información y el tipo de medio

Jorge Oziel Rivas Puente

Modulation and Demodulation

Modulation is the process of encoding information from a message source in a

manner suitable for transmission. It generally involves translating a baseband
message signal to a passband signal at a much higher frequency. Modulation
can be done by varying the amplitude, phase or frequency of a high frequency
carrier in accordance with the amplitude of the message signal. The modulating
signal can 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=log2 m bits/symbol.

Demodulation is the process of extracting the baseband message from the

carrier so that it may be processed and interpreted by the intended receiver. The
circuit which performs the process of demodulation is called a detector circuit.
 Modulation techniques for the type of information

The two types of modulation: analog and digital modulation techniques have
already been discussed. In both the techniques, the baseband information is
converted to Radio Frequency signals, but in analog modulation these RF
communication signals are continuous range of values, whereas in digital
modulation these are prearranged discrete states.

➢ Analog Modulation

In this modulation, a continuously varying sine wave is used as a carrier wave

that modulates the message signal or data signal. The Sinusoidal wave’s general
function is shown in the figure below, in which, three parameters can be altered
to get modulation – they are amplitude, frequency and phase, so the types of
analog modulation are:
• Amplitude modulation (AM) the amplitude of the carrier wave is varied
in proportion to the message signal, and the other factors like frequency
and phase remain constant. The modulated signal is shown in the below
figure, and its spectrum consists of lower frequency band, upper frequency
band and carrier frequency components. This type of modulation requires
greater band width, more power. Filtering is very difficult in this modulation.
It is used in portable two way radios, VHF aircraft radio, Citizen's Band
Radio

• Frequency modulation (FM) varies the frequency of the carrier in

proportion to the message or data signal while maintaining other
parameters constant. It is also used in telemetry, radar, seismic
prospecting, and monitoring newborns for seizures via EEG, two-way
radio systems, music synthesis, magnetic tape-recording systems and
some video-transmission systems. In radio transmission, an advantage of
frequency modulation is that it has a larger signal-to-noise ratio and
therefore rejects radio frequency interference better than an equal power
amplitude modulation (AM) signal. For this reason, most music is
broadcast over FM radio. The efficiency and bandwidths depend on
modulation index and maximum modulating frequency.

• Phase modulation (PM) the carrier phase is varied in accordance with

the data signal. In this type of modulation, when the phase is changed it
also affects the frequency, so this modulation also comes under frequency
modulation. Phase modulation is widely used for transmitting radio waves
and is an integral part of many digital transmission coding schemes that
 underlie a wide range of technologies like WiFi, GSM and satellite
televisión.

Analog modulation (AM, FM and PM) is more sensitive to noise. If noise enters
into a system, it persists and gets carried till the end receiver. Therefore, this
drawback can be overcome by the digital modulation technique.

➢ Digital Modulation

In digital modulation, an analog carrier signal is modulated by a discrete signal.

Digital modulation methods can be considered as digital-to-analog conversion,
and the corresponding demodulation or detection as analog-to-digital conversion.
The changes in the carrier signal are chosen from a finite number of M alternative
symbols (the modulation alphabet).
• Amplitude-shift keying (ASK) is a form of amplitude modulation that
represents digital data as variations in the amplitude of a carrier wave. In
an ASK system, the binary symbol 1 is represented by transmitting a fixed-
amplitude carrier wave and fixed frequency for a bit duration of T seconds.
If the signal value is 1 then the carrier signal will be transmitted; otherwise,
a signal value of 0 will be transmitted. Is also commonly used to transmit
digital data over optical fiber. For LED transmitters, binary 1 is represented
by a short pulse of light and binary 0 by the absence of light. Laser
transmitters normally have a fixed "bias" current that causes the device to
emit a low light level. This low level represents binary 0, while a higher-
amplitude lightwave represents binary 1.

• Continuous phase modulation (CPM) is a method for modulation of data

commonly used in wireless modems. In contrast to other coherent digital
phase modulation techniques where the carrier phase abruptly resets to
zero at the start of every symbol (e.g. M-PSK), with CPM the carrier phase
is modulated in a continuous manner. For instance, with QPSK the carrier
 instantaneously jumps from a sine to a cosine (i.e. a 90 degree phase shift)
whenever one of the two message bits of the current symbol differs from
the two message bits of the previous symbol. This discontinuity requires a
relatively large percentage of the power to occur outside of the intended
band (e.g., high fractional out-of-band power), leading to poor spectral
efficiency. CPM is attractive because the phase continuity yields high
spectral efficiency, and the constant envelope yields excellent power
efficiency.

• Frequency-shift keying (FSK) is a frequency modulation scheme in

which digital information is transmitted through discrete frequency
changes of a carrier signal. The technology is used for communication
systems such as amateur radio, caller ID and emergency broadcasts. The
simplest FSK is binary FSK (BFSK). BFSK uses a pair of discrete
frequencies to transmit binary (0s and 1s) information. With this scheme,
the "1" is called the mark frequency and the "0" is called the space
frequency. The time domain of an FSK modulated carrier is illustrated in
the figures to the right.

• Multiple frequency-shift keying (MFSK) is a variation of frequency-shift

keying (FSK) that uses more than two frequencies. MFSK is a form of M-
ary orthogonal modulation, where each symbol consists of one element
from an alphabet of orthogonal waveforms. M, the size of the alphabet, is
usually a power of two so that each symbol represents log2M bits.

• Minimum-shift keying (MSK) is a type of continuous-phase frequency-

shift keying that was developed in the late 1950s and 1960s. Similar to
OQPSK, MSK is encoded with bits alternating between quadrature
components, with the Q component delayed by half the symbol period.
However, instead of square pulses as OQPSK uses, MSK encodes each
bit as a half sinusoid. This results in a constant-modulus signal (constant
envelope signal), which reduces problems caused by non-linear distortion.
In addition to being viewed as related to OQPSK, MSK can also be viewed
as a continuous phase frequency shift keyed (CPFSK) signal with a
frequency separation of one-half the bit rate.

• Phase-shift keying (PSK) is a digital modulation scheme that conveys

data by changing (modulating) the phase of a reference signal (the carrier
wave). The signal is impressed into the magnetic field x,y area by varying
the sine and cosine inputs at a precise time. It is widely used for wireless
LANs, RFID and Bluetooth communication.

• Quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) is both an analog and a digital

modulation scheme. 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. QAM is being
 used in optical fiber systems as bit rates increase; QAM16 and QAM64
can be optically emulated with a 3-path interferometer.

• Single-carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) is a frequency-division multiple access

scheme. It is also called Carrier Interferometryand Linearly precoded
OFDMA (LP-OFDMA). Like other multiple access schemes (TDMA,
FDMA, CDMA, OFDMA), it deals with the assignment of multiple users to
a shared communication resource. SC-FDMA can be interpreted as a
linearly precoded OFDMA scheme, in the sense that it has an additional
DFT processing step preceding the conventional OFDMA processing. It
has been adopted as the uplink multiple access scheme in 3GPP Long
Term Evolution (LTE), or Evolved UTRA (E-UTRA)

• Trellis modulation (AKA trellis coded modulation, or simply TCM) is a

modulation scheme that transmits information with high efficiency over
band-limited channels such as telephone lines.