Digital Modulations

Main modulation schemes employed in DTV

 QPSK (Quadrature Phase Shift Keying)

Phase Modulation - Employed in DVB-S standard

QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation)

Phase + Amplitude Modulation - Employed in DVB-C

OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing)

Multi-carrier - Employed in DVB-T and ISDB

8VSB (8 Vestigal Side-Band)

8 Amplitude Levels - Employed in ATSC
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 Digital Modulation
CW carrier with constant amplitude
in the frequency domain
(Spectrum Analyzer)
and in the time domain (Oscilloscope)

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 Digital Modulation

Carrier with constant amplitude and 90° phase variations

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 Digital Modulation

Carrier with amplitude variations (- 50%)

and phase variations (180°)

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 Digital Modulation

Constellation of possible carrier positions in a diagram

showing phase (angle) and amplitude (distance from
centre) for QPSK and 16-QAM modulation schemes
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 Modulation spectrum QPSK/QAM

To measure the level (power) of any digitally modulated

signal it is advisable to use a thermal power meter.

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 OFDM Modulation
•
Employs many carriers equally frequency spaced
•
Each carrier is modulated using QPSK or a QAM type

OFDM
Modulation
Spectrum

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 Digital Microwave Links
Differences from analogue – Rx threshold

• Link performance does not degrade progressively as the receiver

input reduces but remains constant down to a very low threshold
• Threshold depends on Code Rate, Symbol Rate, Rx noise figure,…
(normally it is around –90dBm)
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