AM & FM Transmitter &

Receiver
 AM Transmitter
The functions of transmitter are:

1. To convert original information into electrical signal.

2. To amplify the weak signal.
3. To modulate the signal.
4. To increase the power level of modulated signal.
5. To transmit the signal through transmitting antenna.

The AM transmitters are of two types:

1. Low level modulated transmitter.

2. High level modulated transmitter.
 AM Radio Transmitters
• Transmitter must generate a signal with the right type of
modulation, with sufficient power, at the right carrier
frequency, and with reasonable efficiency.

1. Low level modulation

In low level modulation, the generation of AM wave takes
place in the initial stage of amplification, i.e at a low power
level. Then the AM modulated signal is amplified using class B
amplifier to increase the power level.

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AM Low-Level Transmitter

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 AM Transmitters Contd.,
• Master Oscillator: It generates frequency with high degree of
stability. The stable RF source is provided by crystal oscillator.
• Buffer amplifier: It isolates master oscillator and harmonic
generator. BA provides very high input impedance and
prevents master oscillator from variations in load current (to
minimize changes in oscillator frequency). The buffer
amplifiers are usually class-A amplifier.
• Harmonic generator: generates harmonics of input
frequency. The desired harmonics will be selected by a
properly tunned circuit.
• Class C amplifier: has narrow bandwidth and high efficiency.
• Class B amplifier: has wider bandwidth and low efficiency. It
is used to increase the power level of modulated signal.

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 Radio Transmitters Contd.,

2. High level modulation

In high level modulation, modulation takes place in the final
stage of amplification and therefore modulation circuitry has
to handle high power.

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AM High-Level Transmitter

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 AM Transmitters Contd.,
• Master Oscillator: It generates frequency with high degree of
stability. The stable RF source is provided by crystal oscillator.
• Buffer amplifier: It isolates master oscillator and harmonic
generator. BA provides very high input impedance and
prevents master oscillator from variations in load current (to
minimize changes in oscillator frequency).
• Harmonic generator: generates harmonics of input
frequency. The desired harmonics will be selected by a
properly tunned circuit.
• Class C amplifier: has narrow bandwidth and high efficiency.
It is used to increase the power level of carrier signal and then
modulation is done at high power level.

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 AM Transmitters Contd.,
• Class B amplifier: has wider bandwidth and low efficiency. It
is used to increase the power level of modulated signal.
• Feeder and Antenna: The Tx power is fed to a transmitting
antenna for effective radiation. The length of the antenna
should be of the order of wavelength for effective radiation.
The antenna is normally located at a distance from the Tx and
hence power from the Tx is fed to the antenna through a
properly designed transmission line called feeder. The
impedance of the feeder line must be properly matched with
the transmitter impedance at one end, and with the antenna
impedance at the other end.

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Comparison between High Level and Low Level
Transmitter

S. No. High Level Modulation Low Level Modulation

Modulation takes place at Modulation takes place at low power level.
1.
high power level.
Class-C amplifier are used After modulation linear amplifiers (Class
2.
which are highly efficient. A, AB or B) are used.
Very high efficiency. Low efficiency than high level modulation.
3.
Complex because of very Easy because of low power.
4.
high power.
Used in high power Used in TV transmitters (IF modulation
5.
broadcast transmitters. method). In laboratory equipments,
walkie-talkies etc.
 AM Radio Receivers

• AM radio receiver is a device which receives the desired AM

signal, amplifies it followed by demodulation to get back the
original modulating signal.
• AM Radio receivers are broadly of two types
i. Tuned Radio Frequency (TRF) Receiver
ii. Superheterodyne Receiver

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Tuned Radio Frequency (TRF) Receiver

Figure: Block diagram of TRF receiver

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 Tuned Radio Frequency (TRF) Receiver
• The TRF receiver is a simple “logical” receiver.
• Two or three RF amplifiers, all tuning together, were employed
to select and amplify the incoming frequency and
simultaneously to reject all others.
• After the signal was amplified to a suitable level, it was
demodulated (detected) and fed to the loud speaker after being
passed through the appropriate audio amplifying stages.
• These are simple to design, align at broadcast frequencies, but
they presented difficulties at higher frequencies.
Drawbacks:
• It is difficult to achieve sufficient selectivity at high
frequencies.
• The bandwidth variation over the tuning range
• INSTABLE --Tendency to oscillate at HF 14
 Super-heterodyne AM Receiver

➢ The frequency parameters of a commercial AM radio are:

➢ RF carrier range =0.535-1.605MHz
➢ Mid-band frequency of IF section =455KHZ
 Characteristics of Radio Receivers
The characteristics of a Radio Receiver are as follows:

• Sensitivity
• Selectivity
• Fidelity
• Adjacent Channel Selectivity (Double Spotting)

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 Characteristics of Radio Receivers Contd.,
Sensitivity:
• The minimum RF signal level that can be detected at the
input of the receiver and produce a usable demodulated
information signal with a minimum acceptable signal-to-
noise ratio
• Receiver’s ability to pick up weak signals and amplify it.
• It is often defined in terms of voltage that must be applied
to the receiver input terminals to give the a standard output
power.
• The sensitivity of receiver mostly depends on the gain of
the IF amplifier.
• Typical sensitivity for commercial broadcast-band AM
receiver is 50 μV

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Characteristics of Radio Receivers Contd.,

16 Lowest

10 Highest Input signal frequency,

535 1605 fs kHz

Sensitivity curve of AM Receiver

The sensitivity of receiver can be improved by

• By reducing the noise level
• By improving the noise figure
• By reducing the receiver bandwidth
• By increasing the gain of RF and IF amplifier stages.
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 Characteristics of Radio Receivers Contd.,

Selectivity:
• Used to measure the ability of the receiver to accept a given
band of frequencies and reject all other unwanted signal
frequencies.
• Receiver's ability to distinguish two adjacent carrier
frequencies.
• It is obtained by using LC tunned circuit.
• It depends on the sharpness of the resonance curve. The
sharper the resonance curve the better the selectivity.
• Sharpness of the curve depends on the Q factor. Higher the
Q more selectivity. (Q = fc / BW)

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 Characteristics of Radio Receivers Contd.,
Attenuation, dB

100

80 Attenuation increases away

from tuned frequency
60

40

20 RX tuned at 950 kHz

0
kHz
-40 -20 0 20 40

Deviation from resonant frequency

Selectivity curve of AM Receiver

Selectivity depends on following factors:

Used to measure the ability of the receiver to accept a given
band of frequencies and reject all other unwanted signal
frequencies.
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Characteristics of Radio Receivers Contd.,

Fidelity:
• The receiver’s ability to reproduce all the modulating
frequencies of the original information.
• If any component attenuated considerably fidelity suffers
and reproduced signal is distorted.
• It is defined by the BW of audio amplifier which amlies the
baseband signal.

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Characteristics of Radio Receivers Contd.,

RX Output,dB

Minimum attenuation

50 Hz 1 kHz 10 kHz

Figure: Fidelity curve of AM Receiver fm

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Characteristics of Radio Receivers Contd.,
Adjacent Channel Selectivity (Double Spotting):
• This is well known phenomenon, which manifests itself by the
picking up of the same station at two near by points on the
receiver dial. It is caused by poor front-end selectivity i.e.
inadequate image frequency rejection.
• Adverse effect of double spotting is that a weak station may be
masked by the reception of nearly strong station at the
undesired point on the dial.
• Double spotting may be used to calculate the intermediate
frequency of an unknown receiver. The undesired point on the
dial is precisely 2fi below the correct frequency.

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 Simple Automatic Gain Control
▪ Minor variations in RF signal level can be compensated by an
AGC circuit.
▪ For weak RF signal, the AGC circuit automatically increases
the receiver’s gain and for strong RF signal it automatically
reduces the receiver’s gain.
▪ Simple AGC is a system which will change the overall gain of
a receiver automatically to keep the receiver output constant
even when input signal strength of the receiver is changing.
▪ An excessive signal can cause overdriving, resulting in non-
linear distortion and saturation.
▪ Weak signal can become immersed in noise and make signal
detection impossible.
▪ AGC is independent of modulation and totally unaffected by
normal changes in modulating signal amplitudes.
AGC Characteristics
AM receiver with simple AGC
Delayed AGC circuit
 Automatic Frequency Control
▪ In FM receivers the stability of local oscillator frequency is a
great problem.
▪ The drift in frequency may take place due to temperature
changes or aging of components etc.
▪ So in order to correct it AFC is used.
▪ The output of demodulator is filtered to get dc voltage. This dc
voltage is applied to varactor diode, which will vary the
capacitance of varactor diode.
▪ Capacitance is connected to LC tank circuit of oscillator. Thus
frequency of LO will change accordingly.
▪ If the LO frequency increases above the desired frequency then
IF will increase, which will increase the dc voltage at the
output of demodulator. This will increase the capacitance of
varactor diode and decrease the frequency of LO.
Automatic Frequency Control (AFC)