Hierarchical Modulation for Unequal Protection

Hierarchical modulation preferably uses a 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) modulator with a convolutional encoder that combine to effectively provide unequal protection to two different segments of streaming input data, with improved power efficiency with the same bandwidth efficiency, by encoding the first segment as coded data as LSBs as the second segment remains uncoded as uncoded MSBs, with the MSBs used for QAM constellation modest reliability interquadrant demodulation and detection, and with the LSBs used for low reliability intraquadrant detection, but with the LSBs subject to convolutional encoding and decoding rendering the LSBs with high reliability detection, such that, the two segments have unequal coding and modulation for providing unequal levels of reliability detection.