What is 16 qam modulation

Editor's Notes

• #2: Hello everyone, this is Colin from Fiber Optics For Sale. In this video, I will explain what is QAM modulation and what is 16QAM.QAM Stands for Quadrature Amplitude Modulation. QAM is both an analog and a digital modulation method. But here, we are only talking about QAM as a digital modulation.Quadrature means that two carrier waves are being used, one sine wave and one cosine wave. These two waves are out of phase with each other by 90°, this is called quadrature. At the receiving end, the sine and cosine wave can be decoded independently, this means that by using both a sine wave and a cosine wave, the communication channel’s capacity is doubled comparing to using only one sine or one cosine wave. That is why quadrature is such a popular technique for digital modulation.QAM modulation is a combination of Amplitude Shift Keying and Phase Shift Keying, both carrier wave is modulated by changing both its amplitude and phase. As shown in this 8QAM waveform, the top is the sine wave carrier, for bit 000, the sin wave has a phase shift of 0°, and an amplitude of 2. While for bit 110, the phase shift is 180°, and the amplitude now is 1. So both phase and amplitude are changed.
• #3: In 16QAM, the input binary data is combined into groups of 4 bits called QUADBITS. As shown in this picture, the I and I’ bits are sent to the sine wave modulation path, and the Q and Q’ bits are sent to the cosine wave path. Since the bits are split and sent in parallel, so the symbol rate has been reduced to a quarter of the input binary bit rate. If the input binary data rate is 100 Gbps, then the symbol rate is reduced to only 25 Gbaud/second. This is the reason why 16QAM is under hot research for 100Gbps fiber optic communication.The I and Q bits control the carrier wave’s phase shift, if the bit is 0, then the phase shift is 180°, if the bit is 1, then the phase shift is 0°.The I’ and Q’ bits control the carrier wave’s amplitude, if bit is 0, then the amplitude is 0.22 volt, if the bit is 1, then the amplitude is 0.821 volt.So each pair of bits has 4 different outputs. Then they are added up at the linear summer. 4X4 is 16, so there is a total of 16 different combinations at the output, that is why this is called 16QAM.
• #4: This illustration shows an example of how the QUADBIT 0000 is modulated onto the carrier waves.Here I and I’ is 00, so the output is -0.22 Volt at the 2-to-4-level converter, when timed with the sine wave carrier, we get -0.22sin(2πfct), here fc is the carrier wave’s frequency. QQ’ is also 00, so the other carrier wave output is -0.22cos(2πfct).
• #5: Here is the proof thatquadbit 0000 is modulated as a sine wave with an amplitude of 0.311volt and a phase shift of -135°. You can now pause for a moment to study the proof.
• #6: This list shows the 16QAM modulation output with different amplitude and phase change for all 16 quadbits. On the right side is the constellation diagram which shows the positions of these quadbits on a I-Q diagram.
• #7: So there you have it. You can visit fo4sale.com for more free fiber optic tutorials.I will see you in the next video!