Polycrystalline diamond films were deposited using a cyclic deposition method where the H-2 plasma for etching (t(E)) and the CH4+H-2 plasma for growing (t(G)) are alternately modulated with various modulation ratios (t(E)/t(G)). From the measurement of full width at half maximum and I-D/I-G intensity ratio obtained from the Raman spectra, it was found that diamond defects and non-diamond carbon phases were reduced a little by adopting the cyclic deposition method. From the cathodoluminescence (CL) characteristics measured for deposited films, the nitrogen-related band (centered at approximately 590 nm) as well as the so-called band-A (centered at approximately 430 nm) were observed. As the cyclic ratio t(E)/t(G) increased, the relative intensity ratio of band-A to nitrogen-related band (I-A/I-N) was found to monotonically decrease. In addition, analysis of X-ray diffraction spectra and scanning electron microscope morphologies showed that CL characteristics of deposited diamond films were closely related to their crystal orientations and morphologies.