1.

AMPLITUDE MODULATION (AM)

1. OVERVIEW

In order that a radio signal can carry audio or other information for broadcasting or for two way
radio communication, it must be modulated or changed in some way. Although there are a number
of ways in which a radio signal may be modulated, one of the easiest is to change its amplitude
in line with variations of the sound.

In this way the amplitude of the radio frequency

signal varies in line with the instantaneous value
of the intensity of the modulation. This means that
the radio frequency signal has a representation
of the sound wave superimposed in it.

In view of the way the basic signal "carries" the

sound or modulation, the radio frequency signal
is often termed the "carrier".

From the diagram, it can be seen that the

envelope of the signal follows the contours of the
modulating signal. Pic 1 Amplitude Modulation

2. ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS

From given instructions, I could execute the file on the MATLAB and then give the existing functions some customized
parameters to test what the system would respond in case of any change to the existing parameters. The following
are what I deduced from customizing the value of some variables, including rng, carrier signal
frequency, and pulse width.

VARIATIONS IN RNG VARIABLES.

Assuming that the nrg in the instructions are typo since the main program and functions written are containing
nrg variable in nowhere, I assume that the actual concern is the rng variable in the first function. The change I
made is highlighted in the following script.

function am_plot(idx,m,c,u,rng)
% AM_PLOT Plots the three modulation signals
% am_plot(m,c,u,rng)
% idx: x index (it can represent time or frequency)
% m: modulating signal
% c: carrier signal
% u: modulated signal
% rng: range of x axis to plot (optional)

if nargin < 5; rng = 1; end % default value for rng

 The following script could be found in second MATLAB Function, The am_plot function. The highlighted part
showing the declaration value for the rng value. The following is the original plot and the result after I modified
the value of rng.

Pic 2 The original result of the program, no changes are made

Pic 3 The Result with rng value changed to 5

With our naked eye we could barely see any change on the diagrams. The rng is stand for Random Number Generation.
When Matlab generates random numbers, they're not truly random; they are based on a pseudo-random number
generating algorithm. The rng command controls the seed, or starting point, for this value. The "default" values resets it
to the original value that MATLAB starts with; this evolves over time.

You can see this behaviour if you do something like called rand(10,1), then calling rng('default') then repeating the rand
command. It will generate exactly the same "random" numbers.

This is generally useful for situations where you want to repeat an (ex ante) random outcome. For instance, in Monte
Carlo simulation or in simulation-based optimization procedures.
But if the questions asked about the nargin variable, then the result would be totally different. The following is the
change that happened to the diagram if I change the value of nargin to 8.

The diagram that showing the carrier frequency is affected.

The diagram seems to be narrower and smaller. However, If
we zoom small enough, the frequency itself is not changing,
just the scale of the object is decreasing.

VARIATIONS IN CARRIER FREQUENCY

This variation is customizing fc variable in the third program, the one that I named am_calculation. The original
value is 20, I varied it with 10 and 30 to portray the smaller and bigger number respectively. The following is
the result.

Pic 5 The AM wave with carrier frequency = 10

Pic 6 The AM Wave with carrier frequency = 30

The result are two waves that differ in both frequency and the period of course, the one with carrier frequency of 30 is
seems to be narrower than one with carrier frequency of 10. Also the left diagram show us the frequency of it’s respective
wave. The upper segment, we can see the information that signal carries, the second is the waveform the carrier signal
made, and the bottom segment with the result of both upper and middle multiplication. All of them with it’s respective
frequency detected.

VARIATIONS IN THE PU LSE WIDTH

This step, we add a modification of the am_plot function

% Now make the second message signal

pw = 0.1; % pulse width
m = rectpuls(t,pw);
% Now make a new carrier
fc = 60; % carrier frequency
c = cos(2*pi*fc*t);
% Modulate the signal
u = m.*c;
The variable pulse width (pw) is now declared with the value of 0,1. Now the diagram is looked like this

Pic 7 The AM wave with pw = 0.1

The middle segment, the carrier signal is going to be a lot narrower as it value is increasing to 60 as expected. The top
section, is the information bit of the signal, now represented as a step signal with a pulse width of 0.1 second. The
convolution of both middle and top wave is represented on the bottom segment. A brief wave consist of carrier-like-
shaped signal with the information bit as it’s “border”

Then, as instructed, I changed the value of pw to 0.01, 0,2. 0,5 and 0,75. The result can be seen on these following set
of diagrams.
Pic 8 AM Wave with pw = 0.01

Pic 9 AM Wave with pw = 0.2

Pic 10 AM Wave with pw = 0.5

 Pic 11 AM Wave with pw = 0,75

From this set of diagram we can observe that each time the value of pw is increasing, it also increasing the size of the
information bit of the signal. As the information signal is pure step, then the convolution happened on the section that
include the value of 1 in the information bit is neatly “cropped” the carrier signal.

We can also observe that in the frequency diagram, there is two peaks that always happened in both negative and
positive side of the diagram, This is called upper sideband (from the positive side) and lower sideband (from the negative
side).

FILTER TO DEMODULATE SIGNAL WITH SPECIFIC PW AND FC

If we apply the value of pw = 0,05 and fc= 15 and plot the result on the matlab, the result is shown at Pic 12.

Pic 12 AM wave with pw = 0.05 and fc = 15