Wireless/SDR Archives | Page 6 of 21

Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) for 1 symbol

May 30, 2022 Wireless/SDR

What is Error Vector Magnitude (EVM)?

Measuring the performance of a digital communication system is not a straightforward task as different impairments have different impacts on the final bit error rate. Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) is a useful metric that helps gauge the impact of all impairments simultaneously from a single value. A Single Modulation Symbol We start with observing a single modulation point at the receive end. Once we establish the baseline error in this scenario, we will combine the effect of all such symbol points into a single number. Assume that a modulation symbol S is represented by a blue constellation point in the

January 25, 2021 Wireless/SDR

On the Link Between Gardner Timing Error Detector and Early-Late Timing Error Detector

This post is written on an advanced topic mainly for practitioners and researchers in the design of wireless systems. For learning about wireless communication systems from a DSP perspective (the idea behind SDRs), I recommend you have a look at my book. F. M. Gardner described his well known Timing Error Detector (TED) — known as Gardner TED — in his often cited article [1]. Gardner was a pioneer in the area of synchronization and Phase Locked Loops (PLL). Later, M. Oerder (a student of Heinrich Meyr) derived this scheme from the maximum likelihood principle in [2]. Heinrich Meyr is

An intuitive way to understand the maximum ratio transmission

November 24, 2021 Wireless/SDR

Maximum Ratio Transmission (MRT)

In Maximum Ratio Combination (MRC), our focus was on combining the signals from multiple antennas at the Rx side. Here, we will see how a similar system can be developed with multiple antennas at the Tx side. As our first consideration, we attempt to replicate the results of Rx diversity in a scenario where there are multiple Tx antennas and a single Rx antenna. This is commonly known as a Multiple-Input Single Output (MISO) system. Assume that there are $N_T$ Tx antennas available and only a single Rx antenna as shown in the figure below. This is a dual problem

Time domain formation of a Raised Cosine pulse for unity excess bandwidth

January 17, 2022 Wireless/SDR

How Excess Bandwidth Governs Timing Recovery in Digital Communication Systems

In the article on pulse shaping, we described the excess bandwidth, also known as roll-off factor, as the extra fractional bandwidth required to shape the spectrum. As it turns out, this excess bandwidth is also crucial for accomplishing timing synchronization in single-carrier systems due to its participation in generating spectral timing lines. Spectral Timing Lines Since a data stream consists of a sequence of 1s and 0s, the signal waveform is not a pure clock. Instead, a series of 1s and 0s appear in random order. The purpose of timing synchronization is to extract a clock out of this waveform.

QAM constellation diagrams for M = 4, 16 and 64

September 19, 2022 Wireless/SDR

QAM Constellations in Digital Communication Standards

Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) is one of the most spectrally efficient modulation schemes. This is why it is used in a wide range of digital and wireless communication systems. Recently, Ref. [1] describes a list of QAM schemes used in the standards as below which I think can be useful for an interested reader. Standard QAM Alphabet Size $M$ Bits/Symbol $\log_2 M$ Digital Video Broadcasting – Cable (DVB-C) 16 to 256 4 to 8 Digital Video Broadcasting – Cable 2 (DVB-C2) 16 to 4096 4 to 12 Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial (DVB-T) 16 and 64 4 and 6 Digital