FM Receivers

Tanaji Biradar

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 FM Super heterodyne Receiver

Difference between AM and FM:

• Operating frequency
• Amplitude limiter and De-emphasis.
• FM demodulator react to amplitude variations as well as frequency changes, so these changes must be
removed before the signal is applied to demodulator.
• It remove all the unwanted amplitude variations from received signal.
• It is placed before FM demodulator.
FM Superhetrodyne Receiver

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R F Amplifier

• In FM RF amplifier is always used

• Advantages of RF amplifier are
• Improve the signal noise ratio
• Match the receiver input impedance to antenna impedance
• For this purpose grounded gate FET RF amplifier is used as shown in fig.
• Since it has low input impedance, therefore input is isolated from the output
• It has simple operation and low distortion
R F Amplifier cont..

• Grounded gate FET RF amplifier fig.

Mixer OR Frequency Changer

• This down convert the received signal to IF

• In FM broadcasting tuning range of incoming frequencies is less than that in
AM broadcasting.(88MHz-108MHz)
• Hence tracking is not a problem
• In RF amplifiers and mixer FET is used and for ocillator BJT is used
IF Amplifiers

• The IF is 10.7MHz and FM BW is 200kHz.

• IF amplifiers are same as AM except higher frequency.
• Due to large BW, gain per stage is low, so two or more IF are used
• IF selection criterion is same as AM.
Amplitude limiter Stage

• In transmission, amplitude of FM wave is changed (due to noise ) ,to remove

unwanted changes in amplitude of received FM signal before demodulator
amplitude limiter is used otherwise output is distorted
 Amplitude limiter Stage cont..
Operation of limiter :
• The Rg –Cg provides negative leak type bias to gate of FET due
to which –ve voltage is developed across the cap. This volt
increase with increase in input voltage and gate is more and
more –ve with input .
• The gain of amplifier reduces with increase in size of input.,
hence output is constant. This amplitude limiting action is
limited to range from X to Y as shown in fig..
• These current pulses are applied to tank circuit to produce full
sine wave.
• To increase the limiting range two amplitude limiters are
connected in cascade this is know as double limiting.
Amplitude limiter Stage cont..

• Fig shows typical amplitude limiter and its transfer characteristics.

Transfer Characteristics
Of Amplitude Limiter And Response
Frequency Demodulators

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Basics of FM Demodulators

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TYPES OF FM DEMOD

• Slope Detectors Are forms of tuned circuits

• Foster-Seeley discriminator frequency discriminators
• Ratio detectors
• PLL demodulator
• Quadrature detector.
 Simple Slope Detector
• Principle depends on slope of frequency response cha. of a frequency- selective
network.
• Tuned circuit L1-C1 is tuned to FM IF frequency, and produces an output voltage that
is proportional to the input frequency.
• The max o/p volt occurs at the resonant freq (fo) of the tank ckt , and its o/p
decreases proportionally as the i/p freq deviates above or below resonant frq.
• The ckt is designed so that IF (fc)falls in the center of the most linear portion of the
V-F curve as shown in fig.2

Fig.1
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 Slope Detector
• When IF deviates above fc, the o/p volt increases; when IF deviates below fc, the o/p
volt decreases.
• Therefore ,the tuned ckt converts freq variations to amplitudes variations (FM- to-AM) .
• The D, C and R, make up a diode detector circuit converts the amplitude variations to
an output voltage that varies at the rate equal to that of the input freq changes and
whose amplitude is proportional to the magnitude of the freq changes.

Fig-2

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Drawbacks

Advantage
Simple

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 Balanced Slope detector

Fig.1

• It is simply two single ended slope detectors ckts connected in parallel and fed 180’out
of phase.
• The phase inversion is accomplished by Center Tapping the tuned secondary windings
of transformer.
• In fig.1 the tuned circuits (La-Ca and Lb-Cb) perform the FM-to-AM conversion and
the balanced peak detectors (D1,C1,R1 and D2,C2,R2) remove the information from
the AM envelope.
• The tuned circuits , tuned to three diff frequencies as shown fig.1

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Balanced Slope detector

• The IF centre frequency falls exactly half way between

the resonant frequencies of the two tuned circuits.

Fig.2 S- Shaped FM characteristics

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Advantages and Drawbacks of BSD
Advantage
• More efficient
• linearity is better compared to simple slope detectors
Drawbacks
• More difficult to tune ,as the three tuned circuit are being tuned at three different frequency
• Amplitude limiting is not provided linearity is not better.

Because limiting is not provided , a slope detector produces an output voltage that is
proportional to amplitude, as well as frequency variation in the input signal.
 Foster-Seeley OR Phase shift Discriminator

• If you compared with BSD then you will find that

diode and load arrangement is same in both circuit.
• But the method of applying the input voltage to the
diodes which is proportional to the frequency
deviation is entirely different .
• The primary and secondary windings both are tuned
to the same center frequency fc, and hence linearity
improves.

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Phase Discriminator-Principle

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Phase Discriminator-Phasor Diagrams

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Phase Discriminator cont..
• Operation:
• Pri. And sec. are tuned to same center freq. but the voltages to diodes are not same.
They depends on input signal.
• This is due to the change in phase shift between the pri. and sec. winding depending
on the input freq.
• Due to this
2) For f in  f c
• 1) f in  f c the phase shift is such that, output of D1 is greater than D2 ,hence
the output is positive

3) For fin  f c
Vo  Vo1  Vo 2  0 the phase shift is such that, output of D2 is greater than D1, ,hence
the output is negative.
Frequency Response of Phase

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Advantages and Disadvantages Of Phase
Discriminator
• Advantages
• More easy to tune than BSD
• Linearity is better ,since operation depends on phase relationship between pri.
and sec. which is very linear. Disadvantages
• Doesn't provide any amplitude limiting.
Ratio Detector

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Ratio Detector

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Ratio Detector..

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Ratio Detector cont..

• Advantages :
• Easy to tune
• Very good linearity, due to linear phase relationship between primary and
secondary.
• Amplitude limiting is provided .
 Comparison
Sr. Parameter Balanced slope Phase Ratio Detector
No. Detector Discriminator

1 Tuning Critical, as 3 tuned circuits Not critical Not critical

are used

2 o/p Pri.and sec. freq. Pri.and sec. phase Pri.and sec. phase
characteristics relationship relationship relationship
depends on

3 Linearity poor Very good Good

4 Amplitude limiting no no provided

5 Application Not used in practice FM radio Satellite TV sound section ,narrow

station receiver band FM receiver
Amplitude Limiting

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Automatic Frequency Control (AFC)
• In FM local oscillator frequency is great problem
• This is because of temp. aging of components etc.
• To correct frequency automatically AFC is used.
• AFC circuit is shown in fig.