Wireless sensor nodes have a limited amount of energy resource that determines their lifetime. So, Energy efficient modulation techniques are of paramount importance for wireless sensor communication (WSC). Also the type and behavior of the pulse shaping filters used, influences the performance of the modulation scheme. The Alternating Quadratures Differential Binary Phase Shift Keying (AQ-DBPSK) modulation scheme which is a variation of the Differential Binary Phase Shift Keying (DBPSK) scheme is simulated and a comparative study of communication performance metrics like Magnitude Error, Phase Error, Bandwidth Efficiency and Bit Error Rate (BER) for Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK), DBPSK and AQ-DBPSK using Raised Cosine and Root Raised Cosine filters are presented and analyzed. The results obtained show that tradeoffs can be made between spectral efficiency and energy efficiency by selecting the proper modulation scheme and using the appropriate value of excess bandwidth for the pulse shaping filter.