Enthusiasts receivers & the majority of Satellite Receivers used for domestic viewing can only receive 2 of the modulation types in use with dvb-s2 broadcasts QPSK & 8PSK,
Professional Tandberg type satellite receivers can receiver all dvb-s2 modulation types & variants with the appropriate upgrades,
Quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK)
Sometimes this is known as quaternary PSK, quadriphase PSK, 4-PSK, or 4-QAM. (Although the root concepts of QPSK and 4-QAM are different, the resulting modulated radio waves are the exactly same.) QPSK uses four points on the constellation diagram, equispaced around a circle. With four phases, QPSK can encode two bits per symbol, shown in the diagram with gray coding to minimize the bit error rate (BER) — sometimes misperceived as twice the BER of BPSK.
The mathematical analysis shows that QPSK can be used either to double the data rate compared with a BPSK system while maintaining the same bandwidth of the signal, or to maintain the data-rate of BPSK but halving the bandwidth needed. In this latter case, the BER of QPSK is exactly the same as the BER of BPSK - and deciding differently is a common confusion when considering or describing QPSK.
Given that radio communication channels are allocated by agencies such as the Federal Communication Commission giving a prescribed (maximum) bandwidth, the advantage of QPSK over BPSK becomes evident: QPSK transmits twice the data rate in a given bandwidth than BPSK does - at the same BER. The engineering penalty that is paid is that QPSK transmitters and receivers are twice (or more) complicated than the ones for BPSK. However, with modern electronics technology, the penalty in cost is very moderate.
As with BPSK, there are phase ambiguity problems at the receiving end, and differentially encoded QPSK is often used in practice.
Phase-shift keying (PSK) is a digital modulation scheme that conveys data by changing, or modulating, the phase of a reference signal (the carrier wave).8PSK,
Any digital modulation scheme uses a finite number of distinct signals to represent digital data. PSK uses a finite number of phases, each assigned a unique pattern of binary digits. Usually, each phase encodes an equal number of bits. Each pattern of bits forms the symbol that is represented by the particular phase. The demodulator, which is designed specifically for the symbol-set used by the modulator, determines the phase of the received signal and maps it back to the symbol it represents, thus recovering the original data. This requires the receiver to be able to compare the phase of the received signal to a reference signal — such a system is termed coherent (and referred to as CPSK).
Alternatively, instead of using the bit patterns to set the phase of the wave, it can instead be used to change it by a specified amount. The demodulator then determines the changes in the phase of the received signal rather than the phase itself. Since this scheme depends on the difference between successive phases, it is termed differential phase-shift keying (DPSK). DPSK can be significantly simpler to implement than ordinary PSK since there is no need for the demodulator to have a copy of the reference signal to determine the exact phase of the received signal (it is a non-coherent scheme). In exchange, it produces more erroneous demodulations. The exact requirements of the particular scenario under consideration determine which scheme is used.
Amplitude and Phase-shift keying or Asymmetric Phase-shift keying, (APSK),
Is a digital modulation scheme that conveys data by changing, or modulating, both the amplitude and the phase of a reference signal (the carrier wave). In other words, it combines both Amplitude-shift keying (ASK) and Phase-shift keying (PSK) to increase the symbol-set. It can be considered as a superclass of Quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). The advantage over conventional QAM, for example 16-QAM, is lower number of possible amplitude levels, resulting in fewer problems with non-linear amplifiers.
Applications
The DVB-S2 specification permits the use of 16APSK and 32APSK modes, allowing 16 and 32 different symbols respectively and are intended for mainly professional, semi-linear applications. They can be also used for broadcasting but they require a higher level of available C/N and an adoption of advanced pre-distortion methods in the uplink station in order to minimize the effect of transponder non-linearity.
In telecommunications, the carrier-to-noise ratio, often written CNR or C/N, is the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of a modulated signal. The term is used to distinguish the CNR of the radio frequency passband signal from the SNR of an analogue base band message signal after demodulation, for example an audio frequency analogue message signal. If this distinction is not necessary, the term SNR is often used instead of CNR, with the same definition.
Digitally modulated signals (e.g. QAM or PSK) are basically made of two CW carriers (the I and Q components, which are out-of-phase carriers) . In fact, the information (bits or symbols) is carried by given combinations of phase and/or amplitude of the I and Q components. It is for this reason that, in the context of digital modulations, digitally modulated signals are usually referred to as carriers. Therefore, the term carrier-to-noise-ratio (CNR), instead of signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) is preferred to express the signal quality when the signal has been digitally modulated.
High C/N ratios provide good quality of reception, for example low bit error rate (BER) of a digital message signal, or high SNR of an analogue message signal.
