Week 1

ELEC 4402 Communication Systems

Analog Communications
Dr Defeng (David) Huang

These lecture notes were compiled and edited from multiple resources.

1
 Why Modulation?
Baseband is the band of frequencies representing
the original signal.

The utilization of communication channel requires

a shift of the range of baseband frequencies into
other frequency ranges suitable for transmission,
and a corresponding shift back to the original
frequency range after reception.

This shift is accomplished by using

modulation/demodulation.
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 Baseband Signal
Sources of Information

Speech – a band from 300 Hz to 3400

Hz
Music – a wider band of frequencies
up to 15 kHz

Moving Pictures – a bandwidth of ~4.2 MHz.

Computer Data – transmission in bursts

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 What is Modulation?
 Modulation is defined as the process by which some
characteristic of a carrier is varied in accordance with a
modulating wave
 Modulation is performed at the transmitter
 After receiving a signal,the original baseband signal is
restored by using demodulation.
 Demodulation is the way to restore the original baseband
signal

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 Carrier Signal: sinusoidal wave
The sinusoidal wave is parameterized by
constant amplitude, frequency and phase:

x(t )  A cos2ft   

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 Table of Modulation Methods
AM/FM/PM: amplitude/frequency/phase modulation
ASK/FSK/PSK: amplitude/frequency/phase shift-keying

Modulating Modulation performed

Signal on

Analog modulation AM FM PM
methods
s(t )  A sin(2 ft   )

Digital modulation
methods ASK FSK PSK
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Continuous-wave Modulation
Ac cos(2 f c t )
Carrier wave

A modulating signal m(t )

Amplitude-modulated signal
Ac 1  ka m(t )  cos(2 f c t )

Frequency-modulated signal
Ac cos 2 f c t  2 k f  m( )d 
 t

 0 

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 Amplitude Modulation (AM)

m(t ) envelope

A base-band signal s  t   Ac 1  ka m(t )  cos(2 f ct )

amplitude sensitivity
c  t   Ac cos(2 f c t )
(volts-1)

carrier amplitude
carrier frequency

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 Frequency Domain
Ac ka Ac
S f    f  f c     f  f c    M  f  f c   M  f  f c 
2 2

Bandwidth: Transmission bandwidth is 2W Hertz

Power:  - functions are dominant, yet carry no information.
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 Frequency Domain

Negative frequencies become visible for positive frequencies

Upper Sideband and Lower Sideband

Transmission bandwidth of AM is 2W
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1st requirement: Carrier Frequency and Signal
Bandwidth
The carrier frequency fc is required to be much greater than the
highest frequency component W of the message signal m(t).

f c  W
W is the message bandwidth.

Otherwise, the envelope (or amplitude) cannot be visualized

and therefore cannot be detected satisfactorily
by an envelope detector.

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 1st requirement

fc < W
fc >> W

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 AM detection
 A simple and highly effective demodulation device is
envelope detector.
 It consists of a diode and a resistor–capacitor filter. First
the diode is forward-biased and the capacitor C charges
up rapidly to peak value. When input signal falls below
this value, the diode becomes reverse-biased and the
capacitor C discharges slowly through the load resistor
Rl.

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 Envelope Detector Output

contains a ripple at the carrier frequency

removed by low-pass filtering
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 2nd requirement: Over-modulation

percentage modulation
max ka m  t   100
t

s  t   Ac 1  ka m(t )  cos(2 f c t )
over-modulation
results in envelope distortion

ka m  t   1 for all t ka m  t   1 for some t

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 Single-tone Modulation
m(t )  Am cos  2 f m t 

s  t   Ac 1   cos  2 f mt  cos(2 f ct ) modulation factor

  ka Am
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 Power Content

carrier power
1 2
2 Ac

signal power

2  18  2 Ac
2

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 AM Limitations and Improvements
Two major limitation
1. Amplitude modulation is wasteful of power (only a fraction
of the total transmitted power is affected by m(t)).
2. Amplitude modulation is wasteful of bandwidth (it
requires a transmission bandwidth equal to twice the
message bandwidth)

These limitations can be overcome using:

1.Double sideband-suppressed carrier (DSB-SC)
modulation
2.Vestigial sideband (VSB) modulation
3. Single sideband (SSB) modulation
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