Lecture 5: Introduction to Modulation
What is Communications?
• Communication involves the transfer of information from one
point to another.
• Three basic elements
- Transmitter: converts message into a form suitable for transmission
- Channel: the physical medium, introduces distortion, noise, interference
- Receiver: reconstruct a recognizable form of the message
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Human Speech Signal (baseband)
➢ Human voice (speech) frequencies range typically between 0.1
KHz – 15 KHz.
➢ Through subjective testing, it is estimated that filtered speech
signal (300 Hz – 3.4 KHz) is good quality for telephony services.
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Video Signal (baseband)
NTSC, SECAM and PAL are the analog television color systems
stayed in use until digital conversion.
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Low-frequencies not useful for Wireless transmission
Why?
Due to the large wavelength of low frequencies:
➢ For generation and reception of the EM waves, we need really
large antennas (of the order of wavelength 𝝀).
Example: for f = 3 KHz, 𝝀 = 300000m; the desired antenna size is
impractical to be an effective radiator of Electromagnetic (EM)
waves.
➢ Though, attenuation of lower EM wave frequencies is lesser than
higher frequencies; the older analog AM systems operated at low-
frequencies could provide coverage of hundreds of kilometres.
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What is role of Modulation?
▪ Baseband signals, e.g. speech, video etc., are low-pass signals.
▪ Transmitting low-pass signals wirelessly is not practically
feasible [Low-frequency Antenna design is difficult in practice]
▪ Thus, a shift/translation of baseband frequencies to higher
frequency ranges is “desirable”.
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What is role of Modulation?
The fundamental role of a modulation scheme is to frequency-
translate
“Low-pass” information-bearing baseband signal m(t)
into s(t) which has higher frequencies suitable for transmission.
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“How to do Modulation?”: Example
Based on your current knowledge, what do you suggest to
convert (modulate) a base-band signal m(t) (with low-
frequency content) into a signal s(t) with spectral content in a
high-frequency range?
Modulator s(t)
m(t)
ONE OPTION
<----------- from this
<-------- Create this
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Product Modulation Example (transmitter end) side)
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Demodulation Example (receiver end)
How to recover m(t) from s(t)?
Why not simply divide s(t) by c(t) to retrieve m(t) back !!
That is
➢ Difficult to realize a divider circuit !!
➢ There is also a problem of “divide by zero”
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Demodulation Example (receiver end)
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Summary of this example
Given low-pass/baseband
signal m(t)
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Introduction to Modulation
A general modulated carrier can be represented mathematically as
where 𝑓𝑐 is the carrier frequency.
▪ Recall that a sinusoid is completely specified by
A(t) (amplitude) & 2𝜋𝑓𝑐 𝑡 + 𝜙(𝑡) (instantaneous phase).
▪ Once the carrier frequency fc is specified, only two parameters
are candidates to be varied in the modulation process:
A(t) & 2𝜋𝑓𝑐 𝑡 + 𝜙(𝑡)
▪ If A(t) is linearly related to message signal m(t), we get “linear
modulation”.
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Introduction to Modulation
▪ If ϕ(t) or its time derivative ϕ′ t is linearly related to the
message signal m(t), we get angle modulation.
Precisely,
if ϕ t ∝ 𝑚(𝑡) , we call it phase modulation
if ϕ′ t ∝ 𝑚(𝑡) , we call it frequency modulation
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Linear Modulation
A general modulated carrier can be represented mathematically as
▪ In a Linear modulation, A(t) varies in one-to-one
correspondence with message signal m(t) & 𝜙 𝑡 is constant
(assume ϕ t = 0).
▪ Precisely, a “linearly modulated” carrier signal is represented by
where A(t) varies linearly with m(t).
▪ Examples: A(t) = 𝐴𝑐 m(t), A(t) = 𝐴𝑐 (1 + 𝑘𝑎 m(t))
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Double-Sideband Modulation (DSB)
▪ A DSB modulation results when A(t) = 𝐴𝑐 m(t) i.e.
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Double-Sideband Modulation (DSB)
It follows from the modulation theorem that
▪ The transmitted signal bandwidth required 𝐵𝑇 = 2𝑊 Hz.
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DSB Demodulation (ideal scenario)
▪ Assuming ideal channel conditions:
i.e. no attenuation, no delay, no noise/interference
▪ Assuming the receiver has a perfectly matching ‘local’ carrier
signal
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DSB Demodulation (ideal scenario contd.)
Low-pass filtering of d(t) will
produce m(t)
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DSB Demodulation (practical case)
▪ In practical scenario, there is attenuation and delay associated
with the channel.
▪ The received signal, thus, is represented by
where (due to attenuation) and ϕ ∈ [0, 2𝜋) is
the phase-offset due to propagation delay.
▪ Also, at the receiver, the locally generated carrier signal need
not have phase-matching with the carrier used at transmitter.
Thus, the local carrier at the receiver can be denoted by
; 𝑓𝑐 is matched perfectly
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DSB Demodulation (practical case contd.)
▪ The input to the LPF is given by
▪ The LPF output is:
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DSB Demodulation (practical case contd.)