6) Study and Simulation of Amplitude Modulation

THEORY
Modulation is the process of imposing information contained in a lower-frequency electronic
signal onto a higher-frequency signal. The higher-frequency signal is called the carrier and the
lower-frequency signal is called the modulating signal. If the information is imposed on the
carrier by causing its amplitude to vary in accordance with the modulating signal, the method is
called amplitude modulation. The two signals are multiplied together and the theory shows how
they interact to create the carrier and two sidebands.

MATHEMATICAL DESCRIPTION

The mathematical description of the unmodulated carrier wave is

Where is the carrier frequency and A is the peak value of the modulated carrier.
If, for simplicity, a single audio tone is taken as the modulating signal, it can be represented by

where, is the frequency of the audio tone and B is the peak value of the modulating signal.

Now, the modulated wave can be represented mathematically as the product

Factoring and writing in terms of voltage we get,

where, Vc is the peak voltage of the unmodulated carrier, previously represented by A.

Making use of the trigonometric identity

the equation describing the amplitude-modulated wave be written as

where, m is called the modulation factor and is defined as

When expressed as a percentage, this is known as the percent modulation, M.

Simulation

Code for Simulation

Following code is written on GNU-PLOT

Fa=2000.0 # Audio frequency in Hz

Fc=792000.0 # Carrier wave frequency in Hz
Wa = 2.0*pi*Fa; Wc = 2.0*pi*Fc
set samples 100000 # Number of time steps
set xr [0:0.002] # time range
Va = 3.0 # Vpp of Audio wave
Vc = 3.0 # Vpp of career wave
m = Va/Vc
# setting line styles
set style line 1 lt 1 lw 0.1 lc rgb 'red'
set style line 2 lt 1 lw 0.1 lc rgb 'blue'
set style line 3 lt 1 lw 2 lc rgb 'black'
fa1(x) = Va * sin(Wa*x) # Equation of Audio wave
fc1(x) = Vc * sin(Wc*x) # Equation of Radio wave
fx(x) = Vc*sin(Wc*x)+0.5*m*Vc*(cos((Wc-Wa)*x) - cos((Wc+Wa)*x)) #
Modulated wave
set output 'am.ps'
plot fx(x) ti 'modulated' ls 2
set output
Plots obtained from Simulation
For the given code above we can set the different values of m and visualize different degrees of
modulations:

1) Under Modulation(M<100%)

2) 100% Modulation

3) Over modulation (M>100%)

Conclusion
The percent modulation can vary anywhere from 0 to 100% without introducing distortion. If the
percent modulation is allowed to increase beyond 100%, distortion, accompanied by
undesirable extraneous frequencies, results. Above given figures depict three degrees of
modulation.

SUPPLEMENTARY PROBLEMS
1) Why don’t broadcast stations transmit at audio frequencies?

Answer: If stations use audio frequencies for transmitting, stations could not be distinguished from each
other and also huge antennas had to be used to detect these audio frequencies.

2) Which of the AM waves in the given figure depict under modulation? 100% modulation?
Overmodulation?
Answer: Figure (a) and (e) represent under modulation, figure (b) and (d) represent over modulation and
figure (c) represent 100% modulation.

3) An audio signal whose mathematical description is

25 sin(2π 1000t)

Modulates a carrier described as

75 sin(2π150000t)

(a) Sketch the audio signal

(b) Sketch the carrier
(c) Construct the modulated wave showing all amplitude magnitudes
(d) Calculate the modulation factor and percent modulation
(e) What is the frequency of the audio signal? Of the carrier?
(f) What frequencies would show up in a spectrum analysis of the modulated wave?

Answer: (a)
(b)

(c)
(d) m = 0.333 and M = 33.33%

(e) 1000Hz, 150000Hz

(f) 149000Hz, 150000Hz, 151000Hz