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S S S S S C C C

1) AM radio uses amplitude modulation to transmit voice signals at frequencies like 400Hz by multiplying them by a carrier wave around 1000kHz, producing sidebands at the carrier frequency plus or minus the voice frequency. 2) FM radio uses frequency modulation, where small changes in the carrier frequency encode the voice signal, allowing it to be recovered by ignoring frequencies outside the voice range. 3) Problems can occur if the carrier and demodulating signals are out of phase or if the demodulating frequency does not exactly match the carrier frequency.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
36 views2 pages

S S S S S C C C

1) AM radio uses amplitude modulation to transmit voice signals at frequencies like 400Hz by multiplying them by a carrier wave around 1000kHz, producing sidebands at the carrier frequency plus or minus the voice frequency. 2) FM radio uses frequency modulation, where small changes in the carrier frequency encode the voice signal, allowing it to be recovered by ignoring frequencies outside the voice range. 3) Problems can occur if the carrier and demodulating signals are out of phase or if the demodulating frequency does not exactly match the carrier frequency.

Uploaded by

Sajjad Hossain
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Lecture 2

FOURIER TRANSFORMS
AM and FM

We saw in the supplement on power spectra that the human range of hearing is concentrated in the
range 400Hz to about 4000Hz. That’s where we’d expect radio broadcasts to be, as well. But, check
it out ... the AM radio band is 535kHz to 1705kHz, where kHz means ’kiloHertz’ or 103 ·Hz. FM is
88 to 108 MHz, where MHz is megaHertz, or 106 ·Hz. – Humans can’t even hear those frequencies –
so what’s the deal?

The first part of the deal is that low-frequency radiation is easily absorbed by the atmosphere, o
it’s not a very good medium for transmitting signals over distances. People living on mountains
learned this long ago – they invent techniques like yodeling to transmit information. However, we’re
talking of using electromagnetic radiation, and that’s the problem: electromagnetic signals have
to be broadcast from antennae. Note, at right, a TV antennna. Why is it so tall? Because the
theory of antenna design tells us that to broadcast a frequency ω, the antenna has to have height
λ/2, where λ is the wavelength, the distance the wave travels in one cycle. That’s c/ω where c is
the speed of light, 186,000 miles/hr or 51!23 miles/sec. A" 400Hz signal would require a 1/400 sec to
complete one cycle, so it has wavelength 51 23 miles/sec /[400cycles/sec] = 0.12916667miles/cycle
or 682 feet/cycle. An AM antenna at, say, 400 kHz, would have a wavelength less by a factor of a
thousand.

That’s where AM – amplitude modulation, and FM – frequency modulation, come in. Say you want
to transmit a voice signal at 400Hz: ys = As cos(2πfs t) where fs is our frequency. Multiply ys by a
carrier wave yc = cos(2πfc t), where fc is called the carrier frequency and we can assume it is, say,
around 1000kHz. Trig identity:

yc ys = As cos(2πfs t) cos(2πfc t)
As
= [cos(2π{fc + fs }t) + cos(2π{fc − fs }t)]
2
Thus, the product is a wave with two frequencies, fc ±fs , which are going to be at, say 1, 000, 000±400
Hz, well in the AM range.

The process of multiplying one signal by another is called modulation, though in radio talk it’s called
heterodyning. The signals at fc ± fs are called sidebands. And all of this is pretty useless unless we
can recover the original signal from the modulated signal.
That’s where AM – amplitude modulation, and FM – frequency modulation, come in. Say you want
to transmit a voice signal at 400Hz: ys = As cos(2πfs t) where fs is our frequency. Multiply ys by a
carrier wave yc = cos(2πfc t), where fc is called the carrier frequency and we can assume it is, say,
around 1000kHz. Trig identity:

yc ys = As cos(2πfs t) cos(2πfc t)
As
= [cos(2π{fc + fs }t) + cos(2π{fc − fs }t)]
2
Thus, the product is a wave with two frequencies, fc ±fs , which are going to be at, say 1, 000, 000±400
Hz, well in the AM range.

The process of multiplying one signal by another is called modulation, though in radio talk it’s called
heterodyning. The signals at fc ± fs are called sidebands. And all of this is pretty useless unless we
can recover the original signal from the modulated signal.

Let m(t) be the signal we want to broadcast, and cos(2πfc t) be the carrier frequency. What goes
out over the airwaves and comes in to the radio is m(t) cos(2πfc t). Note, however, that
! "
1 + cos(2π2fc t)
[m(t) cos(2πfc t)] cos(2πfc t) = m(t) cos2 (2πfc t) = m(t)
2

m(t) m(t)
+ cos(2π2fc t)
2 2
The point here is that the original signal is now sitting at its original frequency, while another piece
of it is sitting, modulated at twice the carrier frequency. this will produce sidebands at 2fc ± fs .
But these sidebands will be very far away from any of the frequencies in m(t). This means you can
recover m(t) simply by ignoring frequencies higher than any in m.

Lab Problem Try this scheme with the selection from Billie Holliday’s song Good Morning Heartache,
sampled at 44100Hz. What’s the highest frequency in the song? Modulate it with a high frequency
carrier wave cos(2πfc t), and demodulate using the scheme suggested above. How does it sound?

There are a couple of problems with the above scheme. The first is it assumes that the carrier signal
and the demodulating signal are in phase. What happens if they are out of phase? Try this with
the demodulating signal cos(2πfc t + φ) where φ = π3 ; π2 .

The phase of the original signal is intrinsically unknowable, so the above can become a serious
problem. There’s a nastier effect: while the broadcaster may control the carrier wave cos(2πfc t)
quite accurately, you may not be able to reconstruct that wave to the same accuracy. Assume that
the broadcaster uses a carrier frequency fs , but you use a demodulating frequency of fs + ∆f . Try
reconstruction using values of ∆f varying from one to five percent of fs . How does the demodulated
signal sound?

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