In the past few months we have successfully developed a High-speed pulse position modulator. Modulator uses programmable delay microchips which can be programmed by controlled by FPGA. Altogether the modulator board can generate transmitted reference signals with up to 256 positions and with a time resolution as low as 50 ps. For further information please be sure to check out are the abstract of our upcoming article where we delve deeper into this topic the modulator below.

“Energy efficiency is an important metric by which modern communications systems are evaluated. Pulse position modulation (PPM), which uses time intervals among pulses to encode the transmitted data, provides unlimited energy-saving opportunities at the cost of spectrum occupancy. Considering this excellent property, PPM is gaining attention as a candidate waveform for the next generation of long-distance and space communications, where energy efficiency and peak signal-to-noise ratio are the key factors. This paper is devoted to implementing and evaluating a high-speed transmitted reference pulse-position modulation (TR-PPM) modulator board that employs a digital-to-time converter (DTC) based on high-accuracy programmable delay line integrated circuits. The developed prototype can generate high-order TR-PPM signals with up to 256 pulse positions, having a minimal time resolution of about 40 ps. Using step
recovery diodes (SRDs) at the front-end of the modulator allows for achieving a pulse duration of about 150 ps. The testing of the developed prototype has shown that the board can generate TR-PPM waveform with high accuracy and allows achieving data rates up to 20 Mbit/s.”