Performance Comparison of Binary and Quaternary

UWB Modulation Schemes

Jo ao A. Ney da Silva
Instituto Militar de Engenharia and COPPE/UFRJ
P.O.Box 68504, RJ, Brazil, 21945-970
E-mail: abdalla@lps.ufrj.br
Marcello L. R. de Campos
COPPE/Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
P.O.Box 68504, RJ, Brazil, 21945-970
E-mail: campos@lps.ufrj.br
AbstractIn this paper we test and compare different
modulation strategies to be used in Ultra-Wide Band (IR-UWB)
communications. In the UWB systems of interest in this work
the information is conveyed by short-duration pulses; the
modulation scheme determine how the data stream is to be
transmitted over those pulses. Here we test and compare several
schemes based on three types of modulation. The rst type is
the Pulse Position Modulation (PPM), which includes a pulse
delay according to the data to be transmitted. The second is the
recently proposed Pulse Shape Modulation (PSM), that uses a
different pulse shape to each data. The third one, proposed in
this paper, is an M-ary modulation scheme that combines the
shape and amplitude of the pulse to transmit the data, which
we call Pulse Amplitude and Shape Modulation (PASM). Other
M-ary schemes are tested, including the recent orthogonal
M-ary PSM, based on orthogonal Hermite functions, and a new
Quaternary PPM scheme, also proposed here. All schemes are
tested over an AWG channel.
Keywords Impulse Radio, Ultra-Wide Bandwidth, wireless
communications, spread spectrum, orthogonal modulation, or-
thogonal functions, Hermite functions, Pulse Position Modu-
lation, Pulse Shape Modulation, Pulse Amplitude Modulation,
Pulse Amplitude and Shape Modulation.
I. INTRODUCTION
In recent years there has been a growing interest in Ultra-
Wide Bandwidth communications (UWB) by means of Im-
pulse Radio (IR). These communication systems lack a contin-
uous sinusoidal carrier and transmitted signals are impulsive,
i.e., they are extremely short in time and therefore have a
highly spread spectrum. This high frequency content with no
DC component allows its carrierless transmission.
In order to convey data information, pulses are directly
controlled by the chosen pulse-modulation scheme. In this
work we test and compare some standard modulation schemes
along with new modulation schemes proposed here. The next
section brings a brief discussion about the inuence of signal
inversion to the performance of different classes of UWB pulse
modulation. The following sections present the modulation
schemes used in this work.
The rst modulation type to be considered is the well-known
Pulse Position Modulation (PPM) [1], which is implemented
in its original version as well as a new alternative orthogonal
version. A new quaternary PPM scheme is also proposed and
tested. In the same section the Pulse Amplitude Modulation
(PAM) is briey explained. The fourth section presents the
orthogonal Pulse Shape Modulation (PSM) [2] in its standard
version and the polarity-dependent modied version. Two
versions of Quaternary PSM based on four orthogonal pulses
are also presented. A new form of modulation based in the
shape and amplitude of the pulses is presented in the fth
section (Pulse Amplitude and Shape Modulation PASM).
Simulation results are presented in the sixth section. The
conclusions are presented in the last section.
II. MODULATION SCHEMES AND SIGNAL INVERSION
An issue that has not received much attention in many
works dealing with UWB communications is the problem of
signal inversion. In conventional modulated communications
systems, signal inversion causes little or no harm in addition
to fading in multipath channels, for in general phase errors can
be easily detected and corrected. In UWB communications, on
the other hand, this phenomenon deserves special attention, for
many pulse modulation schemes depend on the signal polarity.
In general, special techniques must be developed to assure the
right polarity of the transmitted symbol.
III. PULSE POSITION MODULATION AND PULSE
AMPLITUDE MODULATION
A. PPM schemes
Pulse Position Modulation [1] consists in representing each
symbol by a corresponding delay in the transmitted pulse. The
transmitted signal is then expressed by:
x
P
(t) =
j
w(t jT
f

j
) (1)
where
j
is the delay of the j-th pulse corresponding to the
symbol represented. In a binary modulation we have typically

j
= 0 representing bit 0 and
j
= representing bit 1, where
is a time delay. The pulse waveform is represented by w(t).
T
f
is the frame duration (from the system viewpoint) or pulse
repetition time (from the user viewpoint).
The pulse waveform, w(t), can be any pulse with a short
effective duration. Two waveforms commonly used are [3] the
Gaussian and Rayleigh pulses which are given, respectively,
by the following expressions
w
G
(t, ) =
1 (t/)
2

2
2
exp

t
2
2
2

(2)
GLOBECOM 2003 - 789 - 0-7803-7974-8/03/$17.00 2003 IEEE
w
R
(t, ) = (t/
2
) exp

t
2
2
2

(3)
where is a time scale factor.
Reception as initially suggested for PPM in [1] performs
correlation of the received signal with a special template wave-
form composed by the sum of the two possible transmitted
pulses, being one of them inverted and delayed:
v(t) = w(t) w(t ) (4)
Time delay is optimized for minimum cross-correlation
between w(t) and w(t ). According to gure 1, this value
is approximately 1.9.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
(as a function of )
C
o
r
r
e
la
t
io
n
1.05
1.9
3.3
Fig. 1. Cross-correlation between pulses delayed by .
This scheme allows the use of a single correlator, whose
output gives positive values when applied to in-phase pulses
and negative values to pulses delayed by . This is a polarity-
dependent scheme, implemented here under the name of PPM-
pd.
Orthogonal signals can be trivially obtained with PPM by
making in Eq. (4) greater or equal to the width of the pulse
waveform, but a time slot of twice the pulse width is required
for each bit. Another possibility is to use any value of that
results in a null cross-correlation between w(t) and w(t ).
Figure 1 shows that this happens near = 1.05 and =
3.3. Early simulations showed that both values had the same
performance on AWG channels, so the rst value was used to
implement the orthogonal polarity-independent PPM scheme
named PPM-pi.
A quaternary PPM scheme may be built using four different
delays, each corresponding to a particular dibit being trans-
mitted. The value of cross-correlation between the transmitted
pulse and a particular template r depends only on the relative
delay between two waveforms, . It is convenient to make the
four pulses uniformly spaced in time, that is, the four symbols
are w(t), w(t), w(t2) and w(t3). Delay can assume
only the values 3, 2, , 0, , 2 and 3. Notice that
= 0 correspond to the right symbol matching, with r(0) = 1,
and that r() = r(). The choice of should be such as to
minimize the values of r(), r(2) and r(3), giving a higher
weight to the rst value, followed by the second, since they
occur more often. With this in mind, and after some initial
simulations, we found the optimum value of to be equal to
1.2, resulting in the following coding:
dibit symbol
00 w(t)
01 w(t )
10 w(t 3)
11 w(t 2)
Note that the symbols corresponding to opposite pairs of
code, i.e., the pairs of dibits with higher hamming distances,
are intentionally made to have a relative delay of || = 2.
This new scheme is polarity-dependent and is implemented in
this paper under the name of QPPM.
B. PAM
In Pulse Amplitude Modulation, the same waveform is sent
with different amplitudes corresponding to different data being
transmitted. It can be expressed by the following equation:
x
A
(t) =
j
A
j
w(t jT
f
) (5)
where A
j
is the amplitude of the j-th pulse corresponding to
the symbol represented. In a binary modulation we may have
the optimum case of antipodal signals making, for instance,
A
j
= 1 representing bit 0 and A
j
= 1 representing bit 1. T
f
is the frame duration and the pulse waveform is represented
by w(t).
In this case, detection may be performed by a single
correlator with the template signal equal to a normalized-
energy pulse w(t), which will result in correlation values
equal to 1 or 1. It is obviously a polarity dependent scheme.
Its theoretical performance is the standard performance for
antipodal signals [4].
C. Theoretical Performance of Generic Non-Orthogonal Bi-
nary Pulse Modulation
In a non-orthogonal binary modulation scheme, such as
PPM-pd, each transmitted symbol produces a signal vector
with non-null components in both dimensions and may be
expressed as
s
1
= [

E
s
r

E
s
]
s
2
= [r

E
s

E
s
]
(6)
where E
s
denotes the energy of each symbol waveform and r
is the cross-correlation value between the two waveforms.
In order to evaluate the probability of error let us assume
that s
1
was transmitted. The received vector at the outputs of
the correlators is:
GLOBECOM 2003 - 790 - 0-7803-7974-8/03/$17.00 2003 IEEE
r = [

E
s
+n
1
r

E
s
+n
2
] (7)
where n
1
and n
2
are two zero-mean jointly Gaussian random
variables each with variance N
0
/2 and cross-covariance:
E(n
1
n
2
) =
N
0
2
r (8)
Following a reasoning similar to that used to calculate the
probability of error for binary orthogonal signals [4] we nd
that the probability of error is:
P(e|s
1
) = P(r

E
s
+n
2
>

E
s
+n
1
)
= P(n
2
n
1
> (1 r)

E
s
)
(9)
Since n
1
and n
2
are correlated Gaussian random variables,
we should make an axis rotation in order to obtain two
orthogonal random variables, what can be achieved with:
n

1
=

2
2
n
1

2
2
n
2
(10)
n

2
=

2
2
n
1
+

2
2
n
2
(11)
It is straightforward to nd that E[n

1
] = E[n

2
] = 0,
E[n
2
1
] =
N0
2
(1 r), E[n
2
2
] =
N0
2
(1 + r) and E[n

1
n

2
] = 0.
As a consequence we also have n
1
n
2
=

2n

1
leading to
P(e|s
1
) = P(

2n

1
> (1 r)

E
s
)
= P(n

1
< (1 r)

Es
2
)
= P(n

1
> (1 r)

Es
2
) (12)
where the last equality arises from the fact that n

1
is zero-
mean Gaussian. Then we have:
P(e|s
1
) =
1

N
0
(1 r)

(1r)

Es
2
e

n
2
1
N
0
(1r)
dn

1
=
1

Es(1r)
N
0
e

x
2
2
dx
= Q

(1 r)E
s
N
0

(13)
Due to symmetry, the same error probability is obtained
when it is assumed the transmission of s
2
. So, the error
probability for generic binary signals with cross-correlation
r is
P
b
= Q

(1 r)
E
b
N
0

(14)
where E
b
is the energy per transmitted bit.
This is consistent with the results for antipodal and orthog-
onal signals, where r = 1 and r = 0, respectively:
P
bantipodal
= Q

2
E
b
N
0

(15)
P
borthogonal
= Q

E
b
N
0

(16)
IV. PULSE SHAPE MODULATION
The recently proposed Pulse Shape Modulation (PSM) [2]
is based on the orthogonality of pulse waveforms. Conroy [3]
has highlighted the time orthogonality of the the Gaussian and
Rayleigh pulses, described in equations (2) and (3). It was also
noted that their power spectrum density are similar. The basic
idea of PSM is to represent bits 1 and 0 by any two orthogonal
pulses.
Initially, the motivation for this form of modulation in
IR/UWB systems is related to the possibility of requiring less
time precision than PPM and therefore being more immune to
multipath.
Detection is carried out by comparing the magnitude of the
outputs of two correlators, each using one of the two symbols
as template, with the received symbol as input. This scheme
has also the advantage of being polarity independent, avoiding
the inconvenience of a polarity assurance technique. This is an
example of binary orthogonal PSM and is implemented with
the name of PSM-pi.
Another version of orthogonal PSM is implemented, in
which the decision is made comparing the signed values
of the correlator outputs, thus considering that the correct
symbol polarity is known. We have therefore a polarity-
dependent version of PSM using the same orthogonal symbols,
implemented with the name of PSM-pd. Due to the use of
the orthogonal signals, this is not the best possible polarity-
dependent PSM version. Indeed the optimum situation is
obtained with a pair of waveforms with the most negative
cross-correlation value, which leads us exactly to the case of
antipodal PAM. The version included here has the purpose to
show the immediate gain obtained when we relax the polarity
independence restriction.
M-ary orthogonal Pulse Shape Modulation can be achieved
by combining M distinct orthogonal pulses. In a previous work
[2] a Quaternary Orthogonal Pulse Shape Modulation (QPSM)
scheme was proposed based on a set of four orthogonal pulses
obtained from the combination of orthogonal Hermite func-
tions, optimized for having similar frequency contents and no
DC component. These pulses were used here to implement two
versions of QPSM. In the rst version, polarity independent,
detection is performed through comparison of the magnitude
of four correlator outputs, each having as template one of the
four orthogonal symbols. In the second version comparison is
made regarding the signed value of the correlations, using the
same correlator as in the rst case. These versions are referred
to as QPSM-pi and QPSM-pd, respectively.
GLOBECOM 2003 - 791 - 0-7803-7974-8/03/$17.00 2003 IEEE
V. PULSE AMPLITUDE AND SHAPE MODULATION
A new form of UWB modulation based on both the ampli-
tude and the shape of the pulses is now introduced. The basic
idea is to have M symbols composed by M/2 orthogonal
waveforms along with M/2 inverted-amplitude versions, thus
consisting of biorthogonal signals [4].
Detection with this kind of modulation results simpler
than with an equal-order orthogonal modulation, since the
dimension of the signal space is M/2. This means that for a
quaternary scheme detection is performed through comparison
of two correlator outputs having as templates the orthogo-
nal waveforms. The use of antipodal amplitudes makes this
scheme polarity dependent.
A quaternary Pulse Amplitude and Shape Modulation
(PASM) scheme was implemented in this work with the
name of QPASM. The four symbols used are the Gaussian
and Rayleigh pulses given in equations (2) and (3) and its
amplitude-inverted versions. The optimum coding used put
opposite dibits (pairs of dibits with two different bits) in
antipodal positions
dibit symbol
00 w
G
(t)
01 w
R
(t)
10 w
R
(t)
11 w
G
(t)
where w
G
(t) and w
R
(t) stand for the Gaussian and Rayleigh
pulses, respectively. For M-ary modulation with M greater
than 4, a linear combination of Hermite functions can be
used resulting in orthogonal pulses with very similar frequency
contents [2].
VI. SIMULATION AND RESULTS
In order to compare the efciency of the various modulation
schemes described, we simulated their performances when
used over an additive white Gaussian (AWG) channel. For
each scheme a proper symbol was generated in accordance
with data from a uniform random source. Each symbol was
normalized to have unit energy and then a Gaussian noise
with appropriate variance (N
0
/2) was added to get the desired
signal-to-noise ratio in terms of E
b
/N
0
.
The following modulation schemes were compared:
1) PPM-pd: the original (polarity dependent) binary PPM
scheme described in section III-A, proposed in [1].
2) PPM-pi: an orthogonal binary PPM scheme idealized to
be polarity independent, described in section III-A.
3) PSM-pi: polarity independent orthogonal binary PSM
scheme, described in section IV.
4) PSM-pd: polarity dependent PSM version using the same
orthogonal symbols, described in section IV.
5) QPSM-pi: polarity independent quaternary orthogonal
PSM scheme using four orthogonal pulses, described in
section IV.
6) QPSM-pd: polarity dependent version of quaternary
PSM using the same four orthogonal pulses, described
in section IV.
7) QPASM: polarity dependent quaternary PASM scheme,
described in section V.
8) QPPM: polarity dependent quaternary PPM scheme,
described in section III-A.
9) PAM: polarity dependent binary PAM scheme described
in section III-B, whose theoretical performed was plotted
for comparison according to equation 15.
In gure 2 the performances of the binary PPM and
PSM schemes are plotted. It can be seen that both polarity-
independent schemes, based on orthogonal signals, have iden-
tical behavior, as could be expected. However, it should be
mentioned that the PSM-pi scheme poses less time-precision
restrictions than its counterpart PPM-pi. Comparing PSM-
pi with PSM-pd, which work with the same data symbols,
we note a small gain obtained by the second as a direct
consequence of relaxing the polarity-independence restriction,
though this gain decreases as E
b
/N
0
increases. The PSM-
pd curve coincides with the theoretical curve for binary
modulation with orthogonal signals, given by equation (16).
From these four binary schemes, PPM-pd is by far the one with
the best performance, with an advantage of about 2dB over the
other schemes. This advantage comes both from disregarding
polarity restrictions and from the use of negatively correlated
signals. Results coincide with the theoretical prevision given
by equation (14).
6 4 2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
10
5
10
4
10
3
10
2
10
1
10
0
B
E
R
PPMpi
PPMpd
PSMpi
PSMpd
E
b
/N
0
(dB)
Fig. 2. Binary PPM and PSM schemes in AWG channel.
Figure 3 shows the performance of the quaternary PSM
schemes comparing it with binary schemes PPM-pd and PSM-
pd. It can be easily noted that both quaternary schemes sur-
passes their binary version, PSM-pd, when E
b
/N
0
goes beyond
5dB. Comparing both quaternary PSM schemes we notice
that the same happens as with the binary PSM schemes, i.e.,
the polarity dependent version has a small advantage which
decreases with E
b
/N
0
. It is also noticeable that the quaternary
GLOBECOM 2003 - 792 - 0-7803-7974-8/03/$17.00 2003 IEEE
modulation curves are steeper than those from binary schemes,
causing them to approach the PPM-pd curve as E
b
/N
0
in-
creases, with QPSM-pd meeting PPM-pd at E
b
/N
0
= 8dB.
6 4 2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
10
5
10
4
10
3
10
2
10
1
10
0
B
E
R
PPMpd
PSMpd
QPSMpi
QPSMpd
E
b
/N
0
(dB)
Fig. 3. Quaternary PSM schemes in comparison to binary schemes in AWG
channel.
The new proposed quaternary schemes based on PPM
(QPPM) and PASM (QPASM) have their performances pre-
sented in gure 4. The PPM-pd and QPSM-pi schemes, as
well as the theoretical performance of PAM are plotted as
references. The new quaternary schemes showed performances
always better than QPSM-pi, nevertheless the advantage falls
from 2dB at E
b
/N
0
= 3dB to 1dB at E
b
/N
0
= 9dB.
Both QPASM and QPPM surpass the binary PPM-pd when
E
b
/N
0
exceeds 5dB, having very similar performances, with
little advantage to QPPM. The QPPM curve even approaches
the theoretical PAM curve when E
b
/N
0
goes near 8dB and
beyond.
6 4 2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
10
6
10
5
10
4
10
3
10
2
10
1
10
0
E
b
/N
0
(dB)
B
E
R
PPMpd
QPSMpi
QPASM
QPPM
PAM theoretical
Fig. 4. Various quaternary modulation schemes compared with binary PPM
and PAM in AWG channel.
From the simulations results presented above and the theory
result of equation (14) we can conclude that the BER perfor-
mance of any binary scheme directly depends on the cross-
correlation between its symbols, the lower (more negative) the
better. This can be extrapolated to M-ary modulation schemes.
In those schemes, among the cross-correlation between all
pairs of symbols, the greatest ones (least negatives) tend to
dominate, being responsible for most of the SER as E
b
/N
0
grows and the error rate reaches lower levels. As good coding
takes advantage of it, SER behavior usually translates into
a similar BER behavior. This may explain the decreasing
advantage of QPASM over QPSM since both have maximum
value of cross-correlation between symbols equal to zero.
VII. CONCLUSION
A discussion about the effect of signal inversion due to
propagation in the performance of UWB modulating schemes
was briey presented. A possible advantage for polarity-
independent schemes was highlighted, despite a slight penalty
in performance as compared to the polarity-dependent coun-
terparts. For this kind of scheme, the improvement obtained
by the quaternary Pulse Shape Modulation (PSM) over the
binary PSM scheme encourages the implementation of higher
order orthogonal M-ary PSM schemes with the possibility of
achieving a polarity independent scheme with an even better a
priori BER performance than the polarity-dependent schemes.
The deduction of the theoretical formula for the BER per-
formance of generic non-orthogonal signals binary modulation
was included. This was shown to be in accordance with the
results for antipodal and orthogonal signals. It was veried that
it also matches the BER curve for the binary Pulse Position
Modulation (PPM) scheme tested. Furthermore, the equation
brings valuable insight for the development of new modulation
schemes, turning explicit the dependence of error probability
on the cross-correlation between the symbols.
A quaternary PPM scheme was proposed which keeps low
values of cross-correlation between all symbols and proved
to be the best scheme among those simulated in the paper,
approaching the theoretical performance of binary PAM.
An entirely new form of M-ary modulation based on
biorthogonal signals, Pulse Amplitude and Shape Modulation
(PASM), was proposed, showing a very promising perfor-
mance. In addition to its competitive BER performance, PASM
benets from a smaller complexity of the demodulator relative
to that of schemes based on entirely orthogonal signals.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the UWB group at the
Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, for
fruitful discussions.
REFERENCES
[1] Robert A. Scholtz, Multiple access with time-hopping impulse modula-
tion, in MILCOM93, 1993.
[2] Jo ao A. Ney da Silva and Marcello L. R. de Campos, Orthogonal pulse
shape modulation for impulse radio, in International Telecommunica-
tions Symposium, 2002.
[3] J. T. Conroy, L. LoCicero, and D. R. Ucci, Communication techniques
using monopulse waveforms, in MILCOM99, 1999.
[4] John Proakis, Digital Communications, McGraw-Hill, 4th edition, 2000.
GLOBECOM 2003 - 793 - 0-7803-7974-8/03/$17.00 2003 IEEE