ISSN 2277 – 3916 CVR Journal of Science and Technology, Volume 13, December 2017

BER Analysis of Digital Modulation Schemes using

LabVIEW
R. Prameela Devi1 and Humaira Nishat2
1
Asst. Professor, CVR College of Engineering/ECE Department, Hyderabad, India
Email: [email protected]
2
Professor, CVR College of Engineering/ECE Department, Hyderabad, India
Email: [email protected]

Abstract: Since the last few decades there has been an abrupt With tremendous development in digital communication
rise in technology and all the communication devices of the new systems it is very important to ensure the quality of service
generation mostly rely on digital transmission of information. for real time transmission of video applications and provide
Thus, it has become necessary to give better and efficient user with more powerful and efficient services by using
services to users by employing better digital modulation
better modulation techniques.
techniques. This paper analyses the Bit Error Rate (BER)
performance of different digital modulation schemes such as The most commonly used digital modulation schemes are
Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK), Quadrature Phase Shift BPSK, QPSK & QAM as they offer the lowest bit error rate
Keying (QPSK) and Quadrature Amplitude Modulation as compared to other digital modulation techniques like
(QAM) using LabVIEW. The Additive White Gaussian Noise ASK, FSK, DPSK and other M-ary techniques.
(AWGN) channel is used for analysis and modulation. As In this paper BER [2] analysis is performed under AWGN
LabVIEW is a graphical programming environment it gives channel using LabVIEW for modulation techniques i.e.
good visualization of the results and it also allows us to design BPSK, QPSK and QAM [10].
systems in an intuitive block based manner in short time as
compared to other commonly used text based programming
The paper is organized as follows:
languages. Thus, it is concluded from the simulation results
that BPSK outperforms QPSK and QAM in terms of BER.
• Section II discusses about the digital modulation
Index Terms: AWGN, BPSK, QAM, QPSK schemes, BER and AWGN channel in detail.
• Section III describes the LabVIEW simulation and
I. INTRODUCTION implementation of the generalized block diagram.
• Section IV gives the simulation results.
Communication is the process of conveying information
from one entity to another in sending or receiving • Section V concludes the paper.
information between two or more people. The one who
sends the information is called sender or source of II. DIGITAL MODULATION SCHEMES
information and the one for whom the information is
destined is called the receiver or user. A Simple A. BPSK
communication system consists of a transmitter, a channel It is one of the most commonly used digital modulation
and a receiver. technique where in the phase of the carrier signal is varied
Conventional methods of communication use analog according to the input bits at a particular time.
signals for long distance communication. But these systems In this technique , the sine wave carrier usually takes two
suffer many losses such as interference, distortion, phase values such as 00 and 1800.
attenuation as well as other losses including security. To B. QPSK
overcome these problems, the analog signals are digitized
It is a variation of BPSK which sends two bits of digital
which allow the communication to be more clear and
information at a time. This results in the bit rate to half and
accurate without losses. Not only this, the digital system is
allows space for other users. Since it transmits a
more reliable, easy to design, cheap but also can be saved
combination of 1’s and 0’s, the generated bits are 00, 01, 10
and retrieved more conveniently and above all the capacity
and 11. Each of this combination of 2 bits is represented by
of the channel is effectively utilized.
a phase reversal such as 450, 1350, 2250 and 3150.
The process of digitization [1], [3] involves steps such as
Sampling, Quantizing and Encoding which are performed in C. QAM
analog to digital convertor section. The receiver performs It is a combination of both analog and digital schemes. It
the reverse operations like decoding and reconstruction of actually conveys two message signals or two digital streams
the quantized pulse train which is then given to by changing the amplitudes of two carrier waves using
reconstruction filter to get the original signal. amplitude shift keying or amplitude modulation. These two
Digital modulation [1] techniques provide more carrier waves of the same frequency are out of phase with
information capacity, high data security and fast system each other by 900 and are called as quadrature carrier or
availability with a great quality of communication. quadrature components.

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ISSN 2277 – 3916 CVR Journal of Science and Technology, Volume 13, December 2017

D. BER and the corresponding results by making a change in the

It defines the number of bits that are in error out of the appropriate block in the front panel.
total number of transferrable bits during an observation
period. BER is evaluated using simulations assuming simple LabVIEW has built in analysis capability with functions
channel models usually AWGN channel without fading. If to generate signals, analysis, visualization, and processing of
Eb is the energy of a bit and No is the noise power then BER standard and custom digital and analog modulation formats.
is taken as a function of Eb/No and is expressed as All these are possible using the Modulation Toolkit which is
available as a built-in with LabVIEW. The Toolkit helps to
BER= ½ erfc¥(Eb/N0) (1) rapidly develop custom applications for research, design,
characterization, validation, and test of communications
where erfc is the complementary error function of argument systems and components that are used to modulate and
Eb/N0. Plot of BER curves are used to describe the demodulate signals. The various Modulation Toolkit
performance of a digital communication system. applications include analog and digital modulation schemes
In wireless communications, BER (dB) versus SNR (dB) like AM, FM, PM, ASK, FSK, MSK, GMSK, PSK, QPSK,
is generally used. PAM, and QAM. These modulation schemes are the
foundation of many digital communication standards found
E. AWGN chnnel in 802.11a/b/g/n, ZigBee (802.15.4), WiMAX (802.16),
AWGN channel is one of the wireless communication RFID, satellite communications, and commercial broadcast
[4], [7] channel model which considers a linear addition of among others.
white noise with a constant spectral density and a Gaussian
distribution function of amplitude. It is a simple and To work with RF signals, the Modulation Toolkit (MT)
tractable mathematical model which does not take into complements the PXI-5660 RF vector signal analyzer and
account fading interference, non linearity or dispersion but the PXI-5671 RF vector signal generator. For low frequency
gives a useful insight to gain the underlying behavior of the signals like baseband and IF signals the Modulation Toolkit
system. works with the 100 MHz mixed-signal test platform with
For AWGN channel model the channel capacity is given digitizer, analog waveform generator, and digital waveform
by the equation I/O products.

C=Blog2(1+S/N) bits/sec (2) Figure.1 gives the block diagram of a digital

communication system generated using LabVIEW. As
where B is channel bandwidth in Hz, S/N is Signal to Noise shown in figure 1, all the three modulation techniques
ratio in bits/sec BPSK, QPSK & QAM are implemented in a single system.
The system uses a PN sequence generator which generates a
III. LABVIEW IMPLEMENTATION random signal and is applied to BPSK, QPSK and QAM
blocks. Each of the blocks internally has its own
LabVIEW (Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering communication system i.e. Modulator, AWGN channel and
Workbench) [5], [6], [8] is a graphical programming a Demodulator. The bits are modulated and demodulated in
environment and has become prevalent not only in research their respective blocks. The output from each block is given
labs but also in industries as well as in academia. It gives a to respective constellation graphs as shown and is also
powerful and versatile analysis for measurement and applied as inputs to a single BER block which generates the
automation. The LabVIEW graphical programming BER plot for the three modulation schemes.
language is called Programming and is performed using a
graphical block diagram which compiles into machine code
and eliminates many syntactical details. Since it is software
based, it offers much flexibility than the standard laboratory
instruments. It is possible to view and modify data and/or
control inputs easily using LabVIEW.
As the appearance and operation imitate physical
instruments like oscilloscope, the programs of LabVIEW are
called Virtual Instruments (VI’s). LabVIEW offers various
display options and is designed to facilitate data collection
and analysis.
LabVIEW contains with it the tools to help in
troubleshooting the code and a comprehensive set of VIs
and functions for acquiring, analyzing, displaying and
storing data. LabVIEW has many built in features and may
be used as a tool for simulation and control. It can be
implemented on any of the platforms including Microsoft
Windows, UNIX and LINUX. Other advantages of using
LabVIEW is that it is possible to vary the input parameters

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ISSN 2277 – 3916 CVR Journal of Science and Technology, Volume 13, December 2017

The generated bits are applied as inputs to the modulator

block. Figure 2 shows the block diagram of a
communication system which implements all the three
modulation schemes.
B. Modulator
The input bits from the sequence generator are mapped to
symbols. Number of symbols indicates M-ary of the
modulation scheme.

Bits per Symbol = log2(M) (3)

For example, 16QAM has sixteen different combinations

of amplitude and phase. Each is assigned a 4 bit sequence.
These symbols are then passed through an AWGN channel.
C. AWGN Channel
The AWGN channel generates a complex Additive White
Gaussian Noise (AWGN) with uniform power spectral
density with zero mean and adds it to the complex baseband
modulated waveform from the modulator block. The
AWGN channel gives a signal-plus-noise waveform with
Eb/N0, where Eb represents the energy per bit, and N0 is
the noise variance.
D. Demodutor
At receiver side the received signal is down converted so
that a constellation graph can be plotted. The signal is then
re-sampled using MT fractional re-sampler as demodulator
needs integer number of samples per symbol. This sampled
signal is demodulated to give the output similar to input by
removing frequency and phase offsets.
E. Comparator
The comparator compares the transmitted bit stream with
the received bits from the demodulation process. These bits
need not be synchronized if an MT calculate BER node
(block) is used. The MT Calculate is used to calculate the
average bit error rate for a Galois PN sequence. The two
sequences i.e the PN sequence generated by MT Generate
Bits (Galois, PN Order) with a matching PN order and the
Figure 1. Block Diagram of a Digital Communication System generated received sequence must be same.
using LabVIEW
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
In this paper, LabVIEW is used to design and implement
the communication system block for modulation schemes –
BPSK, QPSK & QAM and their performance is evaluated
by finding BER versus SNR over AWGN channel.
Figure 3 shows BER versus SNR plot generated by the
BER plot generator using LabVIEW. From figure 3 it is
clear that BPSK has lowest BER compared to QPSK &
QAM. For example at Eb/N0 of 4dB, BER value in BPSK is
Figure 2. Communication System using LabVIEW less than 0.01 where as for QPSK it is greater than 0.01 and
A. PN Sequence Generator for QAM it is nearer to 0.1.
At SNR=6, BER value for BPSK is 0 whereas for QPSK
The PN sequence generator generates Galois pseudonoise it is 0.005 and for QAM it is 0.05.
(PN) bit sequences. The selected pattern is repeated unless At SNR=8, BER value for BPSK & QPSK is 0 where as
the total number of bits that is specified is generated. Use QAM has a value of 0.01.
this node to specify the primitive polynomial that determines At SNR =10dB, BER value for BPSK & QPSK is 0
the connection structure of the linear feedback shift register where as for QAM it is greater than 0.001.
(LFSR).

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ISSN 2277 – 3916 CVR Journal of Science and Technology, Volume 13, December 2017

Figure 3. BER graph for BPSK, QPSK and QAM using LabVIEW
Figure 5. Constellation diagram of QPSK using LabVIEW
The BER value over AWGN channel for BPSK, QPSK
and QAM is also given in tabular form in table1.

TABLE I.
COMPARISION OF BER VALUES

Digital Modulation Schemes

Eb/N0 in dB
BPSK QPSK QAM
4 < 0.01 >0.01 ~0.1
6 0 0.005 0.05
8 0 0 0.01
10 0 0 <0.01

Figure 6. Constellation diagram of QAM using LabVIEW

Figure 4, 5, 6 gives constellation diagram of BPSK,

QPSK and QAM as generated using LabVIEW. White dots
in the constellation graph signify symbols and red lines give
the transition from one symbol to another symbol. In figure
4, the constellation diagram of BPSK shows 2 bits each with
a phase difference of 1800. In figure 5, QPSK has four
combinations of two bits and thereby each combination has
Figure 4. Constellation diagram of BPSK using LabVIEW a phase difference of 900. Figure 6 shows 16 QAM
constellation diagram where 16 different combinations of
amplitudes and phases are generated.

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ISSN 2277 – 3916 CVR Journal of Science and Technology, Volume 13, December 2017

V. CONCLUSIONS Technology in Education (MITE), 20-22 Dec. 2013, pp. 405-

410.
Commonly used digital modulation schemes like BPSK, [6] Kalani Nilesh, Anant Dipti, et al., “Performance Analysis of
QPSK & QAM are designed, implemented and their Linear Modulation Techniques with Different Channel
performance based on BER over AWGN channel is Coding in LabVIEW”, IEEE International conference on
evaluated in LabVIEW. Through simulation results it is Circuits, Controls and Communications (CCUBE), CCUBE,
concluded that BPSK performs better compared to QPSK 27-28 Dec.2013, pp 1-5.
and QAM. The graphical environment of LabVIEW was [7] Mathew Binu, George Pooppy, et.al, “BER Comparison of
DCT and FFT Based OFDM Systems in AWGN and
easy to learn and simple to transform the concepts to a
RAYLEIGH Fading Channels With Different Modulation
working program and it is also possible to continuously vary Schemes”, Emerging Research Area and IEEE International
the input parameters and observe the corresponding results. Conference on Microelectronics, Communication and
In conclusion, the whole system is user friendly and BPSK Renewable Energy (AICERA-2013 ICMiCR), June 4-6, 2013,
gives the least number of bits in error for a given number of pp. 1-4.
input bits compared to QPSK and QAM. [8] Shujiao Ji., Ming Zhu, “The Simulation Design of
Communication System Based on LabVIEW”, IEEE 2nd
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