Signals and Systems

Laboratory Exercise 6
Modulation and Demodulation

Objective
The objective of this lab is to illustrate and understand the fundamental concepts of amplitude
and frequency modulation. you will demonstrate (i) AM modulation and (ii) AM demodulation
technique, measure and analyse parameters of AM and FM modulated signals in (iii) time domain
and (iv) frequency domain, and compare their properties.
Theoretical background is provided in the attached excerpts from the book Modern Digital
and Analog Communications, by B.P. Lathi.
Read section 4.3 (Amplitude Modulation).
Read section 5.1 (Concept of Instantaneous Frequency) just for information on general angle
modulation, note the power of an angle modulated wave and its difference from AM case.
Read section 5.2 (Bandwidth of Angle Modulated Signals), focus on Verification of FM
Bandwidth Relationship and on Narrowband FM.
Fundamental formulas are also given in this handout.
For the prelab and lab, you will need pSpice. You can find in on school computers and it is
available for download from the course webpage as well as from the manufacturers website.
The prelab should be done before the lab, and the answer sheet, not longer than one page,
should be given to the demonstrator to sign before the lab starts. You will not be allowed to do
the prelab during the Lab.
Your lab report should have a title, a short description of the purpose of the lab, and include
the prelab report. For the experiments, include sketches or plots of the models (be sure that you
label them and refer to them appropriately if necessary), relevant details of the experiment, and
plots. The text part of the report, with answers, comments and conclusions, should not be more
than 1 page long.

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Introduction
1 Amplitude Modulation
Amplitude modulation (AM) is a technique where the carriers instantaneous amplitude is varied
in accordance with the message (or modulating) signal. If the carrier signal is given as: sc (t) =
A cos(2fc t + ) and the message signal is sM (t), then the AM signal is:

sAM (t) = [A + sM (t)] cos(2fc t) = A[1 + msm (t)] cos(2fc t) (1)

Where m is the modulation index (we ignored the carriers phase here). The absolute value
of the sum A + sM has to be less than 1, at all times, otherwise distortion would occur. This is
one of the limitations of AM. If the modulating signal is a sinusoid, we obtain:

sAM (t) = [A + AM cos(2fm t)] cos(2fc t) = A[1 + m cos(2fm t)] cos(2fc t) =

(2)
= A cos(2fc t) + mA
2
cos[2(fc fm )t] + mA
2
cos[2(fc + fm )t]

The AM signal consists of the carrier component and two sideband components. The above
equation shows the simplicity of AM, but also its shortcomings. The carrier does not convey any
useful information and yet it takes a significant portion of the transmitted signals energy. Also, if
the carrier frequency is known, we would only need one of the sidebands for the message signal
reconstruction, the other sideband unnecessarily increases the modulated signals bandwidth and
also takes a portion of the energy. In addition to this, AM scheme is sensitive to additive noise
- any noise added to the signal during transmission will show up in the reconstructed message
signal, corrupting it.

2 Frequency Modulation
The message signal can be used to vary the carriers instantaneous frequency or phase - which
result in frequency modulation (FM) and phase modulation (PM). These two are related and
together they are often referred to as angle modulation. In this lab we will focus on FM. With
the same notation as above, the FM signal is:

t
sF M (t) = A cos[2fc t + 2 mF M sM ()d + ] (3)
t0

The argument of the cosine in the expression above is the FM signals instantaneous phase.
By taking its derivative with respect to time, we obtain the instantaneous frequency which can
be seen to contain term proportional to the modulating signal. mF M is in fact frequency devia-
tion, which shows the maximum shift of the instantaneous frequency from the carrier frequency,
assuming that is normalised to [-1,+1] range. Modulation index shows how much the modulated
variable varies around its nominal, unmodulated level. Here it can be calculated as:

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 f mF M max(|sM (t)|
= = (4)
fm fm
where fm is the highest frequency of the modulating signal. This reduces to:
mF M
= (5)
fm
if we assume that sM (t) is normalized. Determining the spectrum of an FM modulated signal
is a complex task, even for the simplest case of modulation by a sinusoid. The Fourier series of
such signal is:

+
sF M (t) = AJk () cos[2(fc + kfm )t] (6)

where Jk are k-th order Bessel functions of the first kind. Obviously, the spectrum of an FM
signal is infinite, even in the simplest case! Fortunately, components above certain index can be
ignored, as their power content is very small (less than 1% of power at fc ). if is very small
we only have two sideband components (narrowband FM) and hence the required bandwidth is
B = 2fm . For larger Carsons rule is used:
( )
B = 2f 1 + 1/ (7)

Frequency modulated signals require larger bandwidths for transmission, but they are less
susceptible to noise and interference.
More on AM and FM can be found in the accompanying excerpt from the Lathis textbook.

Prelab
You will do this part of the lab in pSpice. Create the schematic given in Figure 1 in the Schematic
Editor. It demonstrates the operation of the simplest AM detector, known as the envelope detec-
tor. Show (calculate it) that the signal at the output of the multiplier is an AM signal.
In the Analysis Setup (Analysis Setup) make sure that Print Step is set to 0.01 ns and Final
Time to 10 ms. Check the Transient box in the Analysis Setup.

PQ.1 Set the values for the voltage sources to those shown in the figure. Run the simulation. Sig-
nal V1 is the AM signal and signal V2 is the demodulated signal. Measure the maximum
and the minimum values of the modulated signal envelope.

(a) What is the amplitude of the message signal carried in this AM signal? Explain. (Hint:
it is not the amplitude of the voltage source 2. The modulated signal in this example
does not follow strictly the AM mathematical expression presented in the introductory
section. All measurements should be done on the plots shown on scopes display.)
(b) What is the amplitude of the carrier in this AM signal?

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 Figure 1: AM modulator / demodulator schematic

(c) What is the modulation index?

(d) Observe the demodulated signal (V2). Which significant components will this signal
have in the frequency domain? (Hint: Measure its frequency, amplitude, mean value
and the frequency of the fuzz).
(e) Switch to the frequency domain (press FFT button). Zoom in to region between 0
Hz and 30 kHz. Describe the spectral structure of both AM signal and demodulated
signal. Measure the values of the spectral components (frequency and amplitude).
Compare these measurements with your calculations from the above points.

PQ.2 Change the VAMPL value for V2 to 1 V. Repeat the above procedure and record the results.
Comment on the changes in the time domain and in the frequency domain. Which case is
better for maximizing the message component power in the AM signal?

PQ.3 Change the VAMPL value for V2 to 4.8 V. Repeat the above procedure and record the
results. Compare the efficiency of this case with the previous two (the message component
power in the AM signal). What happened with the demodulated signal? What is the cause
of this? How is it manifested in the frequency domain?

1 AM Measurements
You will do this part of the lab using laboratory instruments (signal generator and oscilloscope)
and a breadboard on which you will build the envelope detector shown in Figure 2. You will need
to set the output impedance of the function generator to High Z and generate an AM signal.
For all experiments in this section the carrier signal is a sine wave with amplitude 2 Vpp and
frequency 10kHz. Different modulating signals will be used according to the tasks requested in
LQ.1.1 to LQ.1.5

LQ.1.1 Set the modulating signal frequency to 1 kHz and the modulation depth to 50%). Ob-
serve the modulated signal on the scope (channel 1) in the time domain. Measure the
maximum and minimum values of the envelope of the AM signal, and calculate the

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 Figure 2: Envelope detector

modulation index. What is the modulating signal amplitude? Compare the findings with
the settings on the function generator and then with the demodulated signal shown on
oscilloscope (channel 2).

LQ.1.2 Switch the scope to FFT by pressing MATH button and choosing the FFT option from
the offered list for channel 1 (AM signal). If necessary adjust the time base to get a good
picture of the spectrum. What is the required bandwidth for transmission of the AM
signal? Change the modulating frequency to 500 Hz and 2000 Hz respectively, leaving
other parameters unchanged. How does the required bandwidth change in these three
observations? Generalise.

LQ.1.3 Change the modulating frequency back to 1000 Hz, and change the modulation depth
to 10%. On the time domain display measure the required quantities and calculate the
modulation index. Now look at the frequency domain. How did the spectrum change for
both AM (channel 1) and demodulated (channel 2) signals? (for AM signal comment on
the relationship between the carrier and the sidebands). Starting from this value of the
modulation depth go to 100% in 10% steps. For the AM signal record the waveforms and
values of the carrier component and the sideband components then plot the dependence
of carrier power vs. modulation index and sideband power vs. modulation index. For
the demodulated signal comment on the change of spectrum.

LQ.1.4 Increase modulation depth to 120%. For the AM signal how did this affect the power in
the sidebands? Observe the AM signal in the time domain. Could this be successfully
demodulated? Why? (Now check the demodulated signal shown on channel 2 of the
oscilloscope; bear in mind that AM detector will detect the envelope of the signal)

LQ.1.5 Change the modulating signal from sine to square and set the modulation depth to
50%. Observe the shape of the demodulated signal (channel 2) in time domain and

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 comment on the performance of this simple demodulator (the envelope detector). What
are its limitations (the negative peak clipping)?

2 FM Measurements
LQ.2.1 Switch the function generator to FM. Keep the carrier and message signal frequencies
at 10 kHz and 1000 Hz respectively, and set the frequency deviation to 500 Hz. Ob-
serve the waveform, comment on the differences from AM case. Change the modulating
frequency to 5 kHz, and comment on the difference in the time domain.
LQ.2.2 Change the modulating signal frequency back to 1 kHz. Switch to frequency domain on
the scope. If necessary change the timebase to get a good picture. Compare this result to
that for AM signal. Why is the time domain signal different in these two cases, although
in the frequency domain they look very similar? what is missing from the frequency do-
main picture? (By the way, this type of FM with very low frequency deviations is known
as narrowband FM and is often used in business and public service communications)
LQ.2.3 Increase the frequency deviation from 150 Hz to 8000 Hz in steps given in the table. For
each case comment on the changes in the frequency domain. For each case, determine
the required bandwidth based on the 1% of the carrier power requirement. Plot the
result. Comment on the differences between FM and AM in this respect.

f 150 300 500 800 1500 3000 5000 8000

B

LQ.2.4 Set the frequency deviation to 2400 Hz, and observe the signal in the frequency domain.
What happened to the carrier?

Report
Prelab
In no more than one page, answer questions PQ.1 to PQ.3. Additionally, attach the resulting
plots.

Lab Exercise
In no more than one page answer the questions

LQ.1.1 to LQ.1.5. Attach the table with your measurements and the plot for LQ.1.3. Attach a
sketch of the modulated signal for LQ.1.4.
LQ.2.2 to LQ.2.4. Attach the table and the plot for LQ.2.3.

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 75% of the grade will be awarded for correct answers, and up to 25% will be awarded for the
quality of answers.