Necessary bandwidth and spectral properties of digital modulation

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the Interdepartment Radio Advisory Committee (IRAC) require, for their management of the spectrum, technical guidance concerning the necessary bandwidth and spectral characteristics of digital modulation. The necessary bandwidth is the minimum emission bandwidth required for an acceptable quality of service. The concept of necessary bandwidth is applied to digital modulation. The necessary bandwidths for several digital modulations are considered in detail. These are phase shift keying (PSK), minimum shift keying (MSK), and frequency shift keying (FSK). The techniques used to determine the necessary bandwidths are general and could be extended to other digital modulations. For digital modulation systems, the necessary bandwidth signal power, and bit error rate are all interrelated and tradeoffs among these factors are possible.