A Performance Study of Delta Modulation Systems for Voiceband Data Signals

In this paper the performance of delta modulation (DM) systems have been studied by computer simulation when the input signal to the DM coder is a voiceband data signal. First, the parameter values of three DM systems, linear DM (LDM), constant factor DM (CFDM), and continuously variable slope DM (CVSD) has been optimized for 4800 bits/s differential phase shift keying (DPSK) signal. Then, the performance of the three DM systems have been studied for ideal and noisy channels. It has been found that the peak signal-to-quantization-noise ratio (SQNR) is nearly the same regardless of coding scheme used, but CFDM yields the widest dynamic range. In a noisy channel, however, CFDM is very sensitive to channel bit errors. Considering the overall performance, CVSD appears to be the best among the three DM systems studied. Also, the performances of DM's have been compared with those of PCM and DPCM systems. In addition, we have studied the effect of DM quantization noise on modem bit error rate by the Monte Carlo simulation method. It is possible to transmit a 4800 bits/s DPSK signal at a bit error rate below 10^-5by CVSD with the rate of 32 kbits/s.