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SULAIMANI POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT
2023-2024
COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING
THIRD STAGE

DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS LABORATORY

Experiment 6
Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK)

SUPERVISED BY:
RAWAZ H.ABDULLAH
PREPARED BY:
TAZHAN MOHAMMED ALI
SHAIDA YASEN OTHMAN
MOHAMMED NAMIQ SHARIF
ZHIR NABAZ DHAIR
HSEN NASYAR HSEN
Digital modulation:
In a communication system, modulation is the process of modifying a carrier
wave's properties to encode information for transmission.
Unlike analog modulation, which manipulates continuous signals, digital
modulation works with discrete signals
Digital modulation enables passband communication, where the transmitted
signal's frequency is shifted to a higher frequency range for efficient
transmission. This is necessary because baseband communication, where signals
are transmitted at their original frequency, is not widely used due to various
limitations such as interference and the need for large antennas.
Overall, digital modulation plays a crucial role in modern communication
systems by enabling the efficient and reliable transmission of digital data over
communication channels.
There are many digital modulation techniques based on the type of digital
message (binary or M-ary) and based on their performance, each one of them is
used to a specified type of application.
1.ASK or Amplitude shift Key
2.FSK or Frequency shift key
3.PSK or Phase shift key
In this experiment we will discuss about amplitude shift keying (ASK).

Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK) :

Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK) modulation is a digital modulation technique
where the amplitude of the carrier signal is varied in accordance with the digital
data being transmitted.
In binary ASK the amplitude of the carrier is switched between two values. The
usual choice is on-off keying (OOK)
When the carrier signal is present, it represents one binary state (usually 1), and
when it's absent (turned off), it represents the other binary state (usually 0).

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ASK modulation, offers a straightforward method of encoding digital data onto a
carrier signal by varying its amplitude.
ASK modulation is used in various communication systems, including wireless
data transmission, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), and optical
communication.
It is particularly suitable for applications where simplicity and efficiency are
important factors.
And can be susceptible to noise and interference, especially in environments
with high levels of background noise.
Figure below show the waveforms of amplitude shift keying(ASK):

The modulated signal can be expressed as:

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ASK Modulator block diagram:

Advantages, disadvantages, and applications of (ASK) :

The advantages of (ASK) are
Simple transmitter and receiver design
Offering high bandwidth efficiency.
Low costing.
And have some applications such as :
Optical fiber communications
Low frequency RF applications.
Wireless sensor networks.
ASK also has some disadvantages such as :
being affected much by noise and interference because of having zero in the
modulated signal.
Offering low power efficiency.
Not being suitable for high bit rate signals.

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Test (A): ASK Modulator.
1-First, we connected the basic block diagram shown in Figure below, to set up
our experiment.

We brought a random integer generator to generate a digital message .

And a sine wave to generate a carrier signal.
And the scope to display a Message signal ,carrier signal and modulated signal.
Then we set the stop time at (10/5000).

The block diagram of random integer

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 The block diagram of the sine wave block

From the scope we display:

The message signal

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 The carrier wave

The modulated signal

For spectrum of the modulated signal:
We brought a rate transition block ,delete the scope, then we added the
spectrum analyzer to our block diagram

The block diagram for spectrum of the modulated signal

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 The null-to-null bandwidth = 2Rb =10Khz
Discussion :
In our test, we found that when the message signal is a 1, the modulated signal
turns on, and when the message signal is a 0, the modulated signal turns off.
This characteristic of ASK modulation is why it's often referred to as On-Off-
Keying (OOK).
The spectrum of the modulated signal has a bandwidth equal to twice the bit
rate.
In summary, ASK modulation turns the signal on and off based on the message,
and the bandwidth of the modulated signal is wider than the original message
signal because it includes both the carrier frequency and the modulation
frequency.

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Demodulation :
Is the reverse process of modulation
demodulation is the process of extracting the original information from a
modulated carrier signal at the receiver end of a communication system
and it has two types:(coherent and noncoherent).

Test (B): ASK Demodulator (Coherent):

• Coherent demodulation involves synchronizing the receiver's carrier signal
with the transmitted carrier signal.
We connected the block diagram shown in Figure below.

For coherent demodulator, we need the same carrier signal as the one that we
used at the transmitter.
So (we brought another sine wave block with the same setting as the one that
we used ), by multiplying the modulated signal with that carrier signal, we will
get two frequency components, one is at zero frequency, then by using a low
pass filter (LPF) we can remove the other frequency component (so we brought
an analog filter design ),also we brought a compare to constant block, (use as a
regenerator).

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Sine wave block diagram's setting is the same as another sine wave

Random integer block diagram's setting & Rate transition's setting

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 Analog filter design & compare to constant block diagram's settings
Simulation time=10/5000

From the scope we display :

The message signal

The carrier wave

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 The modulated signal

The product of modulated signal with a carrier wave

The signal passed through analog filter design

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 The demodulated signal
Discussion :
In our experiment on ASK demodulation (coherent), we received the original
message signal. We achieved this by multiplying the modulated signal with
another carrier signal that had the same characteristics as the original carrier
signal. This process helps extract the original message signal from the
modulated signal.
After multiplication, we passed the resulting signal through a low-pass filter. This
filter helps remove any high-frequency components from the signal.
When we observed the output of the low-pass filter, we noticed that the signal
ranged from a maximum amplitude of around 14 to a minimum amplitude of
zero, the mid-point is 7.
We compare this signal to 7 , at a point which greater than 7 the output will be 1
otherwise will be 0 by doing this we receive an original message signal
( Demodulated signal ).
Finally, we observed some delay in the demodulated signal, which was caused
by the filtering process.

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C- ASK Demodulator ( Non-Coherent ) :
Noncoherent demodulation is a technique used in communication systems and
it's the second type of demodulation technique.
for this type of demodulation, we don’t need a carrier signal. Instead of that we
need an envelope detector.
It works by detecting the envelope of the received signal (consists of a diode
and a capacitor).
Noncoherent demodulators typically use envelope detection techniques to
recover the modulating signal.
One common method is the envelope detector, which rectifies the received
signal to remove the negative portions and then applies a low pass filter to
recover the envelope.
We connected the basic block diagram as shown below:

therefore, we can use an amplifier to amplify the amplitude of the signal and
achieve the original amplitude of the message signal by set the (gain)block
but" it is optional" .

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For noncoherent demodulator ,we brought a saturation block used to remove
negative part of Y-Axis and displayed only 0 to 5V of the signal.

Saturation block & sine wave block's settings

Random integer block diagram's setting & Rate transition's setting

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Analog filter design & compare to constant block diagram's settings
Simulation time = 10/5000s

Message signal

Carrier wave

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 Modulated signal

The signal after saturation

The signal passed through analog filter design

The noncoherent demodulated signal

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Discussion :
In our non-coherent ASK demodulation test, we received the original message
signal without using a carrier signal. We processed the modulated signal through
a saturation device to reject negative part of the signal and a low pass filter to
reject high frequency components but the amplitude decreases. Then we see
that the signal at the output of the low pass filter mid-point equals to 0.8 By
comparing the filtered signal to a midpoint of around 0.8, we reconstructed the
original message signal.
ASK has poor performance , since it is heavily affected by channel impairments
such as noise and interference.

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