Amplitude Modulation

Objectives
Basic System
Modulation
AM
AM Spectrum

Simple Spectrum
More Realistic Spectrum
Example: AM Radio

AM Performance

Bandwidth
Efficiency

Summary

Objectives
1. Know two reasons for using a carrier frequency
2. Be able to use a Power Density Spectrum to find:
1. efficiency
2. bandwidth
3. Know the relationship of carrier frequency, modulation frequency and modulation
index to:
1. efficiency
2. bandwidth
4. Be able to explain why AM is limited to 33% efficiency and the consequence of
trying to exceed that

Basic Communications System

The basic communications system has:
Transmitter: The sub-system that takes the information signal and processes it prior to
transmission. The transmitter modulates the information onto a carrier signal, amplifies the
signal and broadcasts it over the channel
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Channel: The medium which transports the modulated signal to the receiver. Air acts as the
channel for broadcasts like radio. May also be a wiring system like cable TV or the Internet.
Receiver: The sub-system that takes in the transmitted signal from the channel and processes
it to retrieve the information signal. The receiver must be able to discriminate the signal from
other signals which may using the same channel (called tuning), amplify the signal for
processing and demodulate (remove the carrier) to retrieve the information. It also then
processes the information for reception (for example, broadcast on a loudspeaker).

Modulation
The information signal can rarely be transmitted as is, it must be processed. In order to use
electromagnetic transmission, it must first be converted from audio into an electric signal.
The conversion is accomplished by a transducer. After conversion it is used to modulate a
carrier signal.
A carrier signal is used for two reasons:

To reduce the wavelength for efficient transmission and reception (the optimum
antenna size is or of a wavelength). A typical audio frequency of 3000 Hz will
have a wavelength of 100 km and would need an effective antenna length of 25 km!
By comparison, a typical carrier for FM is 100 MHz, with a wavelength of 3 m, and
could use an antenna only 80 cm long.
To allow simultaneous use of the same channel, called multiplexing. Each unique
signal can be assigned a different carrier frequency (like radio stations) and still share
the same channel. The phone company actually invented modulation to allow phone
conversations to be transmitted over common lines.

The process of modulation means to systematically use the information signal (what you
want to transmit) to vary some parameter of the carrier signal. The carrier signal is usually
just a simple, single-frequency sinusoid (varies in time like a sine wave).
The basic sine wave goes like V(t) = V o sin (2 f t + ) where the parameters are defined
below:
V(t) the voltage of the signal as a function of time.
Vo the amplitude of the signal (represents the maximum value achieved each cycle)
f the frequency of oscillation, the number of cycles per second (also known as Hertz = 1 cycle
per second)
the phase of the signal, representing the starting point of the cycle.
To modulate the signal just means to systematically vary one of the three parameters of the
signal: amplitude, frequency or phase. Therefore, the type of modulation may be categorized
as either
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AM: amplitude modulation

FM: frequency modulation or
PM: phase modulation
Note: PM may be an unfamiliar term but is commonly used. The characteristics of PM are
very similar to FM and so the terms are often used interchangeably.

AM
Amplitude modulation is the simplest of the three to understand. The transmitter just uses the
information signal, Vm(t) to vary the amplitude of the carrier, V co to produce a modulated
signal, VAM(t). Here are the three signals in mathematical form:

Information: Vm(t)
Carrier: Vc(t) = Vco sin (2 fc t + )
AM: VAM(t) = { Vco + Vm(t) }sin (2 fc t + )

Here, we see that the amplitude term has been replaced with the combination of the original
amplitude plus the information signal. The amount of modulation depends on the amplitude
of the information signal. This is usually expressed as a ratio of the maximum information
signal to the amplitude of the carrier. We define:
Modulation Index
m = MAX(Vm(t) )/ Vco.
If the information signal is also a simple sine wave the modulation index has a simple form:
m = Vmo/Vco
The interpretation of the modulation index, m, may be expressed as: The fraction (percentage
if multiplied by 100) of the carrier amplitude that it varies by. If m = 0.5, the carrier
amplitude varies by 50 % above and below its original value. If m= 1.0 then it varies by
100%.
Here is a typical AM signal, showing the parts. Note that the information modulates the
envelope of the carrier signal.

In this example, the modulation index is < 1.0 .

The AM Spectrum
A spectrum represents the relative amounts of different frequency components in any signal.
Its like the display on the graphic-equalizer in your stereo which has leds showing the relative
amounts of bass, midrange and treble. These correspond directly to increasing frequencies
(treble being the high frequency components). It is a well-know fact of mathematics, that any
function (signal) can be decomposed into purely sinusoidal components (with a few
pathological exceptions) . In technical terms, the sines and cosines form a complete set of
functions, also known as a basis in the infinite-dimensional vector space of real-valued
functions (gag reflex). Given that any signal can be thought to be made up of sinusoidal
signals, the spectrum then represents the "recipe card" of how to make the signal from
sinusoids. Like: 1 part of 50 Hz and 2 parts of 200 Hz. Pure sinusoids have the simplest
spectrum of all, just one component:

In this example, the carrier has 8 Hz and so the spectrum has a single component with value
1.0 at 8 Hz.
Now, the most basic amplitude modulated signal has a pretty simple spectrum. In this
example, a pure sinusoid is used as the information signal (like the EBS test signal).

The carrier has a frequency of 65 Hz, and the information signal is at 5 Hz. The modulation
index is 0.5. The spectrum reveals that there are so-called side-bands on either side of the
carrier. This is known as the beat effect where two frequencies mix to produce the sum and
difference frequencies. An example is when you tune a guitar string against another by
playing the same note simultaneously. If they are not in tune, you can hear the "beat
frequency" which is actually the difference between the two. AM works the opposite way: the
"beat frequency" is the information which produces the side-bands. One can show the
equivalence of these two approaches mathematically (but is slightly boring, so we won't do
it).
It is useful to measure the range of frequencies that the entire signal occupies. This is known
as the bandwidth (BW). In this example the bandwidth would be 10 Hz (70 Hz - 60 Hz). You
can predict the bandwidth in this case using the simple formula: BW = 2f m where fm is the
frequency of the simple sine wave used to modulate with.

A More Realistic Spectrum

The information signal is rarely a pure sinusoid (tone), but rather it is a complex mixture of
pure sinusoids. As already mentioned, any signal can be decomposed into its pure sine and
cosine functions. So it is fair to say that the information signal is just a combination (a
spectrum itself) of many different tones. When a note is played on a trumpet, for example,
there are actually several notes being played simultaneously. They are all related, and are
called harmonics, meaning they are multiples of each other. When an entire orchestra plays,
the spectrum rapidly becomes filled in with a wide variety of notes and their harmonics. This
complexity is of course reflected in the spectrum of the AM signal used to transmit the music
to your radio. A typical signal might look like this:

The carrier is at 65 Hz and the information signal used to modulate has its own spectrum
ranging from about 1 to 11 Hz. The spectrum has the usual appearance: a strong carrier signal
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is the middle, and the two symmetrical side-bands. If you were to take only the upper sideband (USB), and downshift it starting at zero, you would recover the information signal. That
is, in essence, what the receiver does when it demodulates.
Since the information signal is just "added on" to the carrier, we can easily predict the
bandwidth: BW = 2 fm, where fm is now the maximum modulating frequency used (as
opposed to the modulating frequency when a simple signal is used).

Example: AM Radio
AM radio is the most common example of this type of modulation. The frequency band used
for AM radio is about 550 to 1720 kHz. This is the range of carrier frequencies available. The
information transmitted is music and talk which falls in the audio spectrum. The full audio
spectrum ranges up to 20 kHz, but AM radio limits the upper modulating frequency to 5 kHz.
This results in a maximum bandwidth of 10 kHz. Therefore, the FCC can assign stations
frequencies that are 10 kHz apart without fear of overlap (in reality, there still can be some
overlap because the spectrum doesn't just end at the side-band, it actual kind of tapers off
slowly. These "tails" can overlap if the signal is strong enough. You can make you receiver
more selective by changing from the "distant" to the "local" setting to eliminate this at the
expense of sensitivity). So if we fill up the AM band, assigning stations every 10 kHz, there
are 107 available transmitter frequencies.
The practice of limiting the upper frequency to 5 kHz removes some of the original
information (that which falls in the 5-20 kHz) range. Since the ability to exactly reproduce
the signal is called fidelity, there is a loss of fidelity in AM broadcasts. This is one of the
reasons that AM radio doesn't sound that good (compared to FM radio, as we will see later).
Talk radio is relatively unaffected because conversation has very little of its signal above 5
kHz anyway. This might explain why talk radio is much more common on AM than FM.

AM Performance
Bandwidth
Now that the tools are in place, we can begin to make some evaluations of the performance of
AM signals. The first example is bandwidth.
The bandwidth of a signal is always of significance for many reasons, but predominately, it
determines how many channels (or stations) are available in a specific band. We saw that
there could be a maximum of 107 AM radio stations. If you improved the fidelity of AM
radio by making the upper modulating frequency 10 kHz, you would double the signal
bandwidth, and as a result only be allowed 53 radio stations. If you tried to increase the AM
band, you would lose some other band, like amateur radio.
The bandwidth of AM signals can be easily predicted using the now familiar formula: BW =
2 fm.

Efficiency
Since we are ultimately only concerned with the information and not the carrier, we don't
want to waste a lot of energy in the carrier signal. You can define a measure of efficiency as
follows:
= efficiency = PSB / PTOT
where: PSB = the power in all the side-bands
PTOT = the total transmitted power (includes carrier and side-bands)
The more strongly you modulate, the more power in put into the side-bands. We have already
seen that the modulation index, m is the measure of how strongly you modulate. It may be
interpreted at the fraction of the carrier amplitude that you modulate by. If m = 0.5, you vary
the carrier by up to 50 % of its original value. It stands to reason, then, that if the modulation
index is increased, that the efficiency will increase also. Then it would also stand to reason
that you should use the largest value of modulation index, m , as possible. But we have not
addressed the meaning modulating by more than 100% (m= 1.0).
It is possible to modulate by more than 100%. Here is a representative signal using m = 2.0:

The parameters are: carrier = 65 Hz, modulation = single tone at 5 Hz, m = 2.0
By all appearances, this is very successful. The efficiency looks to be about 0.67 (67 %). In
fact, there is no problem at all when transmitting this signal. But there will be trouble in your
receiver. The process of demodulation usually involves detecting the envelope of the AM
signal. This may easily be accomplished by using a low-frequency filter (like a capacitor)
which will remove the quickly oscillating carrier signal, leaving only the slowly-varying
amplitude. But in this case, the envelope no longer matches what was put in: recall, we
started with a simple single tone.
This is what we started with:

But after demodulation in the receiver, we have this:

What you see is the addition of a higher frequency component (a harmonic) to the original
signal. Since we did not get back what was put in, this is known as distortion. The conclusion
is that efficiency may be increased by increasing the value of the modulation index, m, but if
you use a value > 1.0 there will be distortion introduced in the receiver. Unless you are
listening to Metallica, this is generally undesirable. Therefore, the efficiency of AM
transmission is limited by the restraint to keep m < 1.0. The numeric value of efficiency when
m = 1.0 is about 33 %. We conclude that AM has a maximum practical efficiency of about 33
% due to the limitations placed on modulation index. If you try to improve the efficiency by
raising m, you will introduce distortion when the signal is demodulated in the receiver.

Summary

A carrier is used to make the wavelength smaller for practical transmission and to
permit multiplexing.
The spectrum is used to measure bandwidth (the range of frequencies) and the
efficiency (the power in the side-bands compared to the total power)
Bandwidth can be predicted using BW = 2 f m where fm = the maximum modulating
frequency
Efficiency depends only on the modulating index, m (the fraction of the carrier you
modulate by)
AM is limited to 33% efficiency because the modulation index cannot be increased to
> 1.0 without introducing distortion in the receiver.