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modulation is widely used in baseband transmission of digital data, with non-baseband applications having been largely superseded by pulse-code modulation, and, more recently, by pulse-position modulation.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