A Comprehensive Analysis of M-ary PSK and M-ary QAM Schemes

Abstract

In the last few decades, data communication has recorded massive improvements. These improvements were brought about by advancement in digital circuitry, its availability and persistent reduction in cost. Before the advancement of digital communication technology, analogue communication was the dominant means of transmitting data. As the internet expands across the globe, the need to transfer data over long distances increases. However, the major problem with analogue communication is that the quality of signals is lost with distance. Also, it has minimal security and does not support data integration. Digital communications provided an alternative to analogue communication. Today, digital modulations have become part and parcel of the present and future communication technologies. Despite the advantages of these schemes, the traditional channel impairments, such as noise, can affect their performance. Moreover, data transmission is mostly done over wireless channels, which are very unpredictable and are characterised by multipath fading effects. This paper presents a short research article that presents a study of digital modulation schemes (M-ary QAM and M-ary PSK) using MATLAB/Simulink under Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN). The result shows that, among the three modulation schemes compared, QAM has the best BER performance with minimal energy consumption.