RF Overview

Topics:
1. Characteristics of a radio signal 2. Modulation schemes & bandwidth a) Analog modulations i) Amplitude modulation (AM) ii) Frequency modulation (FM) b) Digital modulations i) Frequency shift keying (FSK) ii) Quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) iii) Phase shift keying (PSK) iv) Binary phase shift keying (BPSK) v) Quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK)

Basics

When electrons move, they create electromagnetic waves that can propagate through the space Number of oscillations per second of an electromagnetic wave is called its frequency, f, measured in Hertz. The distance between two consecutive maxima is called the wavelength, designated by l. An electric wave is a changing electric field The changes propagation through space at the speed of light. Changing electric fields travel with changing magnetic fields and carry power.
electric field

power magnetic field

Basics

By attaching an antenna of the appropriate size to an electrical circuit, the electromagnetic waves can be broadcast efficiently and received by a receiver some distance away. In vacuum, all electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light: c = 3x108 m/sec. In copper or fiber the speed slows down to about 2/3 of this value. Relation between f, l , c: lf = c
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Basics

We have seen earlier the electromagnetic spectrum. The radio, microwave, infrared, and visible light portions of the spectrum can all be used to transmit information

By modulating the amplitude, frequency, or phase of the waves.

Basics

We have seen wireless channel concept earlier: it is characterized by a frequency band (called its bandwidth) The amount of information a wireless channel can carry is related to its bandwidth Most wireless transmission use narrow frequency band (Df << f)

Df: frequency band f: middle frequency where transmission occurs A wider frequency band is used for transmission
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New technologies use spread spectrum techniques

What is modulation?
The digital bit stream has to be modulated onto an RF carrier in order for it tobe transmitted. The modulated signal is then transmitted through space in the form of a propagating electromagnetic (EM) field. The government regulatory agency (i.e., the FCC) specifies the frequency at which a particular service can transmit. Thus, not everyone can transmit at the baseband frequency. In order to transmit at baseband, which is at a much lower frequency, the required antenna size would be enormous in order to allow an efficient coupling between the transmitter and free space. For example, if one wishes to transmit a baseband signal at 9.6 kHz, the antenna size would be 31.25 km! There is a difference between analog and digital modulation techniques. Analog modulation schemes are such as amplitude modulation (AM) and frequency modulation (FM). In analog modulation, information is contained in the continuous-waveform shape of the signal. Digital modulation schemes, on the other hand, are used to transmit discrete units of information called symbols, and the information may be contained in the amplitude (e.g., on-off keying), the phase (e.g., phase-shift keying), or the amplitude and phase (e.g., quadrature-amplitude modulation) of the signal.

Analog modulations
Amplitude Modulation (AM): This is a technique used in electronic communication, most commonly for transmitting information via a carrier wave wirelessly. It works by varying the strength of the transmitted signal in relation to the information being sent, for example, changes in the signal strength can be used to reflect sounds being reproduced for a speaker or light intensity for a television pixel. The signal can be written as:- v = ac (1 + m cos wmt) cos wct This represents a signal at frequency wc whose amplitude is modulated by another frequency wm. m = am/ac is the modulation index. To find the frequency spectrum of the am signal the above expression can be rewritten as a sum of signals of constant amplitude:v = ac{cos wct + m/2(cos(wc + wm)t + cos(wc - wm)t)} Above expression shows that the frequency spectrum consists of 3 components at frequencies wc, wc + wm and wc - wm. The applet below shows an amplitude modulated signal in red and how it depends on m and wm. The modulating signal is shown in orange and the frequency spectrum in green.

Analog Modulations contd

Frequency modulation (FM) is a form of modulation which represents information as variations in the instantaneous frequency of a carrier wave. The modulation index for FM is m = maximum frequency deviation/modulating frequency. FM signal can be represented as:v = ac sin(wct + msinwmt) The frequency spectrum can be found by rewriting the above expression as a sum of components of constant frequency using the properties of the Bessel Functions. This gives:v = ac{Jo(m) sin(wct) + J1(m)[sin(wc + wm)t - sin( wc - wm)t] + J2(m)[sin(wc + 2wm)t + sin(wc - 2wm)t] + J3(m)[sin(wc + 3wm)t - sin(wc - 3wm)t] + ... This expression implies that the FM spectrum consists of a component at wc and an infinite number of lines at wc nwm and that the amplitude of the components are given by the bessel functions.

Digital modulations
Frequency Shift Keying (FSK): This is a form of frequency modulation in which the modulating signal shifts the output frequency between predetermined values. Usually, the instantaneous frequency is shifted between two discrete values termed the mark frequency and the space frequency. Continuous phase forms of FSK exist in which there is no phase discontinuity in the modulated signal. The example shown at right is of such a form. In frequency-shift keying (FSK), the bit affects the frequency of a carrier sinusoid. s0(t) =ApT(t) sin(2f0t) s1(t) =ApT(t) sin(2f1t)

The frequencies f0, f1 are usually harmonically related to the bit interval. In the depicted example, f0= 3/T and f1= 4/T.

An example of binary PSK

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Digital modulations contd..

Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM): This is a modulation scheme which conveys data by
changing (modulating) the amplitude of two carrier waves. These two waves, usually sinusoids, are out of phase with each other by 90 and are thus called quadrature carriers hence the name of the scheme.
Rectangular QAM : Expressions for the symbol error-rate of rectangular QAM are not hard to derive but yield rather unpleasant expressions. For an even number of bits per symbol, k, exact expressions are available. They are most easily expressed in a per carrier sense:

so,

The bit-error rate will depend on the exact assignment of bits to symbols, but for a Gray-coded assignment with equal bits per carrier:

so,

Constellation diag. for 16 QAM

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Digital modulations contd..

Odd-k QAM : For odd k, such as 8-QAM (k = 3) it is harder to obtain symbol-error rates, but a tight upper bound is:

Two rectangular 8-QAM constellations are shown below without bit assignments. These both have the same minimum distance between symbol points, and thus the same symbol-error rate (to a a first approximation). The exact bit-error rate, Pb will depend on the bit-assignment. Note that neither of these constellations are used in practice, as the non-rectangular version of 8-QAM is optimal.

Constellation diag. for rectangular 8 QAM

Alternative Constellation diag. for rectangular 8 QAM 12

Digital modulations contd..

Phase Shift Keying (FSK) : Phase-shift keying (PSK) is a method of digital communication in which the phase of a transmitted signal is varied to convey information. There are several methods that can be used to accomplish PSK. The simplest PSK technique is called binary phase-shift keying (BPSK). It uses two opposite signal phases (0 and 180 degrees). The digital signal is broken up timewise into individual bits (binary digits). The state of each bit is determined according to the state of the preceding bit. If the phase of the wave does not change, then the signal state stays the same (0 or 1). If the phase of the wave changes by 180 degrees -- that is, if the phase reverses -- then the signal state changes (from 0 to 1, or from 1 to 0). Because there are two possible wave phases, BPSK is sometimes called biphase modulation.

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Digital modulations contd..

Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK): The concept is simple. Whenever the transmitter wants to send a +1, it will transmit a positive cosinusoid; whenever the transmitter wants to send a -1, it will transmit a negative cosinusoid. The analytic expression for BPSK is

where E is the energy per symbol, and T is the time duration of each symbol. From these expressions, we can see that the information is indeed stored in the phase of the modulated signals s+1(t) and s-1(t).

Signal-space representation of a BPSK signal set

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Digital modulations contd..

Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK): QPSK can transmit two bits of information per symbol period. Quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) makes use of the quadrature component in addition to the inphase component. The in-phase and quadrature components can be combined without interfering with each other because the two are orthogonal to each other; that is,

Therefore, a second BPSK signal in quadrature can be added to the first without introducing interference to either one. This technique, known as QPSK, effectively doubles the bandwidth efficiency of BPSK because it is able to transmit an additional bit during T.

Signal-space representation of a QPSK constellation

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