Pulse-amplitude modulation

Principle of PAM; (1) original Signal, (2) PAM-Signal, (a) Amplitude of Signal, (b) Time

Overview

Pulse-amplitude modulation, acronym PAM, is a form of signal modulation where the message information is encoded in the amplitude of a series of signal pulses.

Example: A two bit modulator (PAM-4) will take two bits at a time and will map the signal amplitude to one of four possible levels, for example −3 volts, −1 volt, 1 volt, and 3 volts.

Demodulation is performed by detecting the amplitude level of the carrier at every symbol period.

Pulse-amplitude modulation is widely used in baseband transmission of digital data, with non-baseband applications having been largely superseded by pulse-code modulation, and, more recently, by pulse-position modulation.

In particular, all telephone modems faster than 300 bit/s use quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). (QAM uses a two-dimensional constellation).

Usage of Pulse-amplitude modulation in Ethernet

It should be noted, however, that some versions of the widely popular Ethernet communication standard are a good example of PAM usage. In particular, the Fast Ethernet 100BASE-T2 medium, running at 100Mb/s, utilizes 5 level PAM modulation (PAM-5) running at 25 megapulses/sec over two wire pairs. A special technique is used to reduce inter-symbol interference between the unshielded pairs. Later, the gigabit Ethernet 1000BASE-T medium raised the bar to use 4 pairs of wire running each at 125 megapulses/sec to achieve 1000Mb/s data rates, still utilizing PAM-5 for each pair.

The IEEE 802.3an standard defines the wire-level modulation for 10GBASE-T as a Tomlinson-Harashima Precoded (THP) version of pulse-amplitude modulation with 16 discrete levels (PAM-16), encoded in a two-dimensional checkerboard pattern known as DSQ128. Several proposals were considered for wire-level modulation, including PAM with 12 discrete levels (PAM-12), 10 levels (PAM-10), or 8 levels (PAM-8), both with and without Tomlinson-Harashima Precoding (THP).

See also

• Amplitude-shift keying
• Carrier Sense Multiple Access
• Pulse-code modulation
• Pulse-position modulation
• Pulse-width modulation
• Pulse-density modulation
• Pulse forming network
• Quadrature amplitude modulation
• 8VSB

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