IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 15, NO.

12, DECEMBER 2011

1271

APSK Constellation with Gray Mapping

Zaishuang Liu, Qiuliang Xie, Kewu Peng, and Zhixing Yang, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractAmplitude phase shift keying (APSK) constellation

is superior to its quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)
counterpart from the mutual information point of view. However,
due to the lack of Gray mapping, it introduces high independent
demapping loss. In this letter, a special kind of APSK constellations with Gray mapping (Gray-APSK) is proposed, which
provides considerable shaping gain compared with the QAM constellations with Gray mapping (Gray-QAM) in both independent
and iterative demapping scenarios, as verified by average mutual
information analysis and bit error rate simulations.
Index TermsAPSK, Gray mapping, shaping gain.

I. I NTRODUCTION

MPLITUDE phase shift keying (APSK) constellations,

first proposed in [1], are robust against nonlinear channels due to their lower peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR),
compared with the conventional quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellations [2]. Therefore, APSK was mainly
employed and optimized over nonlinear satellite channels during the last two decades, as recommended in DVB-S2 [3], [4].
However, in mobile communication and terrestrial broadcasting systems, APSK is rarely employed, while squared uniform
QAM with Gray mapping (Gray-QAM) is often adopted, e.g.,
in LTE [5] and DVB-T2 [6].
From the information theory point of view, for transmission
over a power-limited additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN)
channel, the channel capacity can only be achieved when the
input follows Gaussian distribution. Compared to the conventional squared uniform QAM, shaping the input signaling to be
Gaussian-like is expected to exploit some capacity gain, which
is called the shaping gain [7]. Signaling with non-uniformly
spaced constellations is an efficient shaping technique [8]
[10], wherein APSK is a typical paradigm proposed most
recently [11]. However, unlike the QAM constellations, usually no Gray mapping exists for APSK constellations, which
leads to high independent demapping loss [12], and therefore
restricts their potential applications.
In this letter, the design of APSK constellation with Gray
mapping (Gray-APSK) is addressed. Average mutual information (AMI) analysis and bit error rate (BER) simulations
demonstrate the advantages of the Gray-APSK in both independent and iterative demapping scenarios.
Manuscript received August 30, 2011. The associate editor coordinating
the review of this letter and approving it for publication was J. Jalden.
This work was supported by the National Project of New-Generation Broadband Wireless/Mobile Communication Networks under Grant 2009ZX03003006-04.
The authors are with Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science
and Technology (TNList), as well as the Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P. R. China (e-mail: {liuzs09,
xql06}@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn, {pengkewu, yangzhx}@tsinghua.edu.cn).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LCOMM.2011.101211.111825

II. M UTUAL I NFORMATION E LEMENTS

Assuming the input signal takes from the constellation set
with equal probability, the constellation constrained AMI,
i.e., the AMI between the channel input and the corresponding
output, provides the maximum information rate for error-free
transmissions. Such AMI is called coded modulation capacity
in [12], and is defined as average mutual information of coded
modulation (CM-AMI) in this letter to avoid the vagueness
of the word "capacity". Another important term is BICM
capacity [12], as independent demapping usually leads to some
loss in typical BICM receivers. Again, this BICM capacity is
defined as BICM-AMI in this letter.
The AWGN channel can be modeled as Y = X + N, where
X and Y denote the input and the corresponding output signal
respectively, N denotes the complex Gaussian noise with zeromean and variance of N0 . The CM-AMI constrained by the
M-ray constellation set can be evaluated as [12]
[
]

x
p(yx)
ICM = I(X;Y ) = m x,y log2
,
(1)
p(yx)
and the BICM-AMI can be evaluated as [12]
]
[
m1
m1

x
p(yx)
, (2)
IBICM = I(Bi ;Y ) = m b,y log2

x
b p(yx)
i=0
i=0
i

where m = log2 M, I(; ), [] and p() denote AMI function,

expectation and conditional probability, respectively, and ib
denotes the constellation subset with the i-th bit being b where
b {0, 1}.
III. APSK C ONSTELLATION WITH G RAY M APPING
A. APSK Constellation
An M-APSK constellation is composed of R concentric
rings, each with uniformly spaced PSK points. The M-APSK
constellation set is given by [11]
))
( (

r
i = 0, , n1 1
exp
j
i
+

1
1

n1

(
(
))

r2 exp j
i + 2
i = 0, , n2 1
n2
=
,
(3)

...

( (
))

rR exp j
i + R
i = 0, , nR 1
nR
where nl , rl and l (l = 1, , R) denote the number of points,
the radius and the phaseoffset of the l-th ring, respectively,
Rl=1 nl = M and j = 1. In [11], a general M-APSK
construction strategy was introduced, which includes 3 steps:
1) selecting R and nl , 2) determining rl , and 3) choosing l .

c 2011 IEEE
1089-7798/11$26.00

1272

IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 15, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2011

6
4

1
0
8

12
13

10

14

11

15

27

31

22

14

30

29

25

11

Fig. 1.

15

13
7
5
21
28 24 8 12
2
18
20
4
19
3
1
17 16
0
32 33
48
49
35
51
36
52
34
50
60 56 40 44
37
53
39
55
45
61
57 41
38
54
47
63
43
59
23

Constellation

46

62

(b)

dmin

dh

BICM-AMI

16APSK

(2, 2)
(3, 1)

0.3185
0.4487

0.3489
0.4034

1.781 (5dB)
1.956 (5dB)

64APSK

(3, 3)
(4, 2)
(5, 1)

0.1496
0.1490
0.1149

0.1515
0.1613
0.1423

2.907 (9dB)
2.991 (9dB)
2.893 (9dB)

256APSK

(4, 4)
(5, 3)
(6, 2)

0.0703
0.0509
0.0375

0.0676
0.0692
0.0607

4.141 (13dB)
4.150 (13dB)
4.119 (13dB)

Gray-APSK. (a) (8 2)16APSK, (b) (16 4)64APSK.

Proposition 1: Inspired by the non-uniform method of [8],

it is recommended in [11] that the radius rl is determined as

rl = ln(1 Pl ),
(4)
where Pl can be interpreted as the probability the transmitted
signals located within the l-th ring, which is evaluated as
)
(
l1
nl
/M.
(5)
Pl = ni +
2
i=1
B. Gray-APSK Design
Gray mapping usually does not exist for the APSK constellations proposed by Proposition 1. To possess Gray mapping,
some additional constraints have to be introduced.
Proposition 2: (Gray-APSK design) Both the numbers of
points and the phase offsets of all the rings are the same. The
other parameters are defined as in Proposition 1.
For an M-APSK, where M = 2m , assuming the number of
points on each ring is nl = 2m1 , and the number of rings is
R = 2m2 , where m1 + m2 = m, and both m1 and m2 are nonnegative integers, then (5) and (4) can be rewritten as

and

(m1 , m2 )

42

58

(a)

TABLE I
G RAY-APSK WITH DIFFERENT PAIRS OF (m1 , m2 ): THE MED dmin , THE
HMED dh , THE BICM-AMI( BITS / CHANNEL USE ) AT TYPICAL SNR S .

10

26

1
1
Pl = (l )nl /M = (l ) 2m2
2
2

[
(
]
)
1
rl = ln 1 l
2m2 ,
2

(6)

(7)

respectively. The APSK constellation with the parameters m1

and m2 is called (2m1 2m2 )M-APSK in this letter.
Assuming m1 out of m bits are only relevant to the phase
offsets, which compose an equivalent 2m1 -PSK, Gray mapping
exists between these m1 bits and the 2m1 -PSK points. Furthermore, when assuming the rest m2 out of m bits are only
relevant to the amplitudes, which compose an equivalent nonuniform 2m2 -PAM, Gray mapping also exists between these
m2 bits and the 2m2 -PAM points. By combining those m1
and m2 bits together, Gray mapping is introduced for the
APSK constellations specified by Proposition 2. The proposed
(8 2)16-APSK and (16 4)64-APSK constellations with
Gray mapping are depicted in Fig. 1 as examples.
C. Parameter Optimization Based on AMI Analysis
The parameters m1 and m2 are important for a good GrayAPSK specified by Proposition 2. Since m1 +m2 = m, there are
totally m+ 1 combinations of m1 and m2 . The preferred choice

should make the APSK constrained CM-AMI and BICM-AMI

as large as possible.
The conventional constellation design method usually tries
to maximize the minimum Euclidean distance (MED) dmin
between the constellation points [4], [7], which unfortunately
could not ensure a large CM-AMI or BICM-AMI. Another
parameter, the harmonic mean of the Euclidean distance
(HMED) dh , may be a cost function more relevant to the
BICM-AMI, where [12]
1
dh

1 m 1

m2m i=1
b=0

x x 2 .

(8)

x ib x
ib

For the Gray-APSK with different pairs of (m1 , m2 ), Table I

gives the MED dmin , the HMED dh , and the BICM-AMI
at typical signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values. Based on the
numerical results, it is observed that although dmin accounts
for a large proportion of the BICM-AMI, it does not dominate
the latter. Relatively, dh is more correlated to the BICM-AMI.
For example, the dmin of (1616)256APSK is obviously larger
than that of (32 8)256APSK, but the dh of the former is less
than that of the latter, and the BICM-AMI of the former is
also less than that of the latter at SNR=13 dB.
Fig. 2 illustrates the gaps between the channel capacity and
the CM-AMI/BICM-AMI constrained by the Gray-APSK over
AWGN channels, where the gaps between the capacity and
the AMIs constrained by the Gray-QAM are also depicted
for comparisons. It is shown that the proposed Gray-APSK
is superior to its Gray-QAM counterpart at moderate code
rates of usual interests, e.g., 1/2 or 2/3 around, from both the
CM-AMI and BICM-AMI point of view. Taking the 64-ray
constellations for example, the CM-AMI and BICM-AMI of
the Gray-APSK are about 0.59 dB and 0.46 dB larger than
those of the Gray-QAM, respectively, at the code rate of 2/3.
IV. S IMULATION R ESULTS
In this section, the advantages of the proposed Gray-APSK
constellations compared to their Gray-QAM counterparts are
verified via error performance simulations. The simulation
scenarios are listed as follows.
Scenario A employs the rate-2/3, length-7200 bits turbo
code from LTE V8.1 [5]. 16/64 Gray-QAM and 16/64 GrayAPSK are simulated. Independent MAP demapping and logMAP turbo decoding with 8 iterations are used at the receiver.

LIU et al.: APSK CONSTELLATION WITH GRAY MAPPING

Fig. 2. The gaps between the CM-AMI/BICM-AMI constrained by different

constellation mappings and the channel capacity over AWGN channels.

1273

Fig. 4. BER simulation results for 16/64 Gray-QAM and 16/64 Gray-APSK
of Scenario B.

V. C ONCLUSION
The method of Gray-APSK constellation design is proposed
in this letter. Gray-APSK can provide larger BICM-AMI and
CM-AMI than the conventional Gray-QAM at typical code
rates of interests, which makes it achieve better performance
than its QAM counterpart in both independent and iterative
demapping scenarios, as validated by AMI analysis and error
performance simulations.
R EFERENCES

Fig. 3. BER/BLER simulation results for 16/64 Gray-QAM and 16/64 GrayAPSK of Scenario A.

Scenario B employs the rate-1/2, length-64800 bits LDPC

code from DVB-T2 [6]. 16/64 Gray-QAM and 16/64 GrayAPSK are also simulated. Both independent and iterative
demapping are considered at the receiver, where the max
iteration of the demapping is set to 10. The sum-product
algorithm (SPA) [13] is used for the LDPC decoding with
the max iteration of 50.
The bit error rate and block error rate (BER/BLER) performances of Scenario A are depicted in Fig. 3. At the BER
of 104 or BLER of 102 , the performances of the systems
with 16/64APSK are about 0.1/0.6 dB superior to those with
16/64QAM respectively.
The BER performances of Scenario B are depicted in Fig. 4.
Compared to 16/64QAM, the performances of the independent
demapping systems with 16/64APSK are about 0.1/0.5 dB
superior, and the performances of the iterative demapping
systems with 16/64APSK are about 0.3/0.7 dB superior, at
the BER of 105 .

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