Direct 16 QAM six-port modulator

A direct 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) modulator based on the six-port technique is proposed. It uses a six-port passive microwave network to implement the modulation scheme with suitable terminations. A microwave prototype was built to validate the 16 QAM modulation up to 200 Mbit/s data rate at 4.2 GHz carrier frequency. The error vector magnitude and local oscillator (LO) power testing show that this six-port 16 QAM modulator has wide dynamic range capability to overcome the LO power variation. It has potentially low cost and low power consumption for RF communications applications.