This paper introduces the concept of a nonuniform constellation (NUC) in contrast to conventional uniform quadrature-amplitude modulation (QAM) constellations. Such constellations provide additional shaping gain, which allows reception at lower signal-to-noise ratios. will be the first major broadcasting standard, which completely uses NUCs due to their outstanding properties. We will consider different kinds of NUCs and describe their performance: 2-D NUCs provide more shaping gain at the cost of higher demapping complexity, while 1-D NUCs allow low-complexity demapping at slightly lower shaping gains. These NUCs are well suited for very large constellations sizes, such as 1k and 4k QAM.
