Transmission.

A process called modulation is used to impress the information on

the carrier frequency. Of the many design choices that must be
made, that of the modulation method is among the most important.
Not only does it have a direct influence on system performance but
it also tends to define areas of design in both the sender and the
receiver.

Modulation methods fall into two divisions. The first includes

amplitude and frequency modulation (as in commercial AM and FM
broadcasting) and related types. These related types include two
pulse-based methods in which several pulses are spaced out in time,
each pulse representing one information channel. The two types are
pulse-width (or pulse-duration) modulation and pulse-position
modulation. In the first, the information produces variations in the
width (or duration) of the pulse; in the second, the variation is in
the position of the pulse with respect to time. In the second main
class, pulse-code modulation, the information is coded digitally into
groups of pulses and then transmitted.