A multicarrier QAM modulator

Abstract

A multicarrier quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) modulator has been developed and implemented with programmable logic devices. The multicarrier QAM modulator contains four CORDIC-based QAM modulators. A conventional QAM modulator needs two multipliers, one adder, and sine/cosine ROM's. The designed CORDIC-based QAM modulator has about the same logic complexity as the two multipliers and the adder with the same word sizes. Each QAM modulator accepts 13-bit in-phase and quadrature data streams, interpolates them by 16, and upconverts the baseband signal to a selected center frequency. The frequencies of the four carriers can be independently adjusted. The proposed multicarrier QAM modulator does not use an analog I/Q modulator, and therefore, the difficulties of adjusting the dc offset, phasing, and the amplitude levels between the in-phase and quadrature-phase signal paths are avoided. The multicarrier QAM modulator is designed to fulfil the spectrum and error vector magnitude (EVM) specifications of the wideband code-division multiple-access (WCDMA) system. The simulated EVM is 1.06% root mean square (rms), well below the specified 12.5% rms for WCDMA. The measured ratio of the integrated first/second/third adjacent channel power (4.096-MHz bandwidth) to the integrated channel power (4.096-MHz bandwidth) is -68.16/-68.24/-66.17 dB versus the specified -45/-55/-55 dB.