Effect of Noise on AM

Anindya Biswas
210108004

25th September 2023

Introduction
We will now talk about Noise. Schools have changed a lot since our time. How many of you have
heard your teachers saying ”This is the most indisciplined class I have ever seen”? Ours was one of
those. So the question is what behavior leads to this kind of remarks? The answer is noise or more
precisely acoustic noise. What does acoustic noise mean? Obviously, the noise we are talking about
is all in baseband, limited to around 4 kHz spectrum. Noise feels like an unnecessary disturbance
to us. Let’s say two people are talking or someone is shouting in the corridor and we are interested
in listening to that conversation or the person shouting. That can be thought of as an interference.
But that’s not noise. Noise is something like this: suppose your friend is in a crowd and he calls you
over phone. You won’t be able to understand what the people around your friend are chattering
about. Or, suppose you are in your home and someone is in the kitchen and there are fans in your
room. The person in the kitchen talks to you. Will you understand that? No. There are fans
making sounds. Do you understand that? No. Or, if there is a mixer turned on, will you understand
what the person telling you? No. So what we call noise and what it does is that it masks the signal.
Or it masks the communication signal we are trying to transmit.

Signal to Noise Ratio

Now let’s again go back to your school days. There is something called Pin-drop Silence. What
does it mean actually? Silence, that is so silent that you can even hear the sound of a pin drop.
Basically the absolute absence of background noise. Now at your home, around 2 AM if you drop a
pin or even at the slightest movements, you hear something. If someone sneezes and your home is in
a reasonably quiet neighborhood, you can hear that at 2 AM. Also in this class, we have experienced
that I do not need a mic if I turn off the AC. By this time, you may have got the point. That is
the absence of noise does not make the drop of a pin any louder but in the presence of the usual
background noise, you are unable to hear the sound of a pin dropping. In other words, the presence
of a louder noise does not make the sound any weaker. Our ear is receiving both signals, but one
signal is masked by the other. And we tend to perceive the stronger ones better. So what you are
getting is the addition of the signal and the noise. So what really matters at the end of the day from
a perceptual perspective is the ratio of the signal to the noise. Not their individual absolute
values. This ratio is known as Signal to Noise Ratio or SNR in short. As this is a ratio, it is
usually expressed in dB.
 
P ower of signal
SN RdB = 10 log
P ower of noise

Now from a communication engineering perspective, noise and interference are different. But inter-
ference is something that you can still understand as explained earlier. Interference is something
you are not interested in but you can understand it and noise is total garbage. So from an electrical
communication engineering perspective let’s discuss about noise in more detail.

Different Kinds of Noise

In most wireless systems, signals pass through the atmosphere and they are basically electromag-
netic signals. Now there are clouds in the sky and because of that there are ions and electric field of
electrons and electric charges. Now the earth has a magnetic field and all kinds of other electromag-
netic disturbances are there. Power lines are there which produce magnetic fields around them. All

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of these come into atmospheric noise. We will discuss this in detail perhaps in a 4th year course.
There is something called shot noise that is left to a course on communication circuits. What is
shot noise and how to deal with are discussed there. Or it can be discussed perhaps in a course on
advanced analog circuits. And finally, there is thermal noise. We are particularly interested in it.

Thermal Noise
From an electrical communication engineering perspective, thermal noise is the principal source of
noise. This happens due to the random movements of electrons in discrete circuit components.
Whether it is an active component or a passive component it will have thermal thermal noise.
Because all the circuits that we are talking about have electrons moving inside them. It can be
a resistor. There are electrons moving inside it. It can be a capacitor, some electrons or electric
fields moving (varying in case of fields) inside it. Semiconductor devices also have electrons moving
inside them. Now we still treat conductors as electron gases. So there will be random movements of
electrons associated with the temperature. Because that is how gases are modeled. Now the power
spectral density of thermal noise is given as
hf
Sww (f ) =  hf

2 e kT −1

Here,
h= Planck Constant
k= Boltzmann Constant
T= Absolute Temperature

Now we know for x << 1, (ex − 1) can be approximated as x. Doing simple calculations, we can
hf
find out that kT << 1 for f < 1012 Hz (1 T Hz) at ambient temperature that is T = 300K. So the
power spectral density of thermal noise gets simplified as
kT N0
Sww (f ) = =
2 2
Where,
N0 = kT

So, now do you remember what operates at 1 T Hz? The Chitti Robot. This is obviously beyond
science. Anyway, jokes apart, we can say that for frequencies up to 1 T Hz the power spectral
density of thermal noise is flat. And after that it becomes non-flat. For all practical purposes, this
noise spectrum is white. Because right now our phones operate at around 6 GHz. 5G operates at
3.5 GHz. So what we have proven is that for all practical purposes, thermal noise can be considered
as white noise.

Additive White Gaussian Noise

Now the motion of electrons is totally random and so it naturally adds to the signal that is prop-
agating through the medium. So it becomes Additive White Gaussian Noise. Now another funny
thing that I learned while I was preparing for the probability course in Hindi language is that the
Sanskrit root word for noise is rv (rav). And the word for one who is born of noise and creates
noise is derived from it and that is rAvZ (raavan). So that is how the name is derived. Now let
us come back to our topic which is noise in communication systems. Now let us pass this additive
white gaussian noise through a filter.

w(t) y(t)
h(t)

So I pass a white noise process w(t) through a filter h(t) and I get y(t). So the power spectral density
of y(t) is
N0 2
Syy (f ) = |H(f )|
2

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And, power of y(t),
Z ∞
N0 2
Py = |H(f )| df
2 −∞

By the way, you can not determine the power of a white noise process as it is infinity, you can only
try to determine the power of filtered noise. Now, let Hmax be the maximum value of |H(f )| in the
passband of the filter. Then power of y(t) can be expressed as

N0 2
Py = · 2Bneq Hmax
2
2
= N0 Bneq Hmax

where Bneq is the noise equivalent bandwidth of the filter and is defined as
R∞
−∞
|H(f )|2 df
Bneq = 2
2Hmax

|H(f )|

Bneq
Fig: Noise equivalent bandwidth of a typical filter

A more intuitive definition of Bneq is that it is the equivalent bandwidth the filter would have if it
had been flat with a response Hmax . This is the bandwidth that an ideal brick-wall type filter should
have to generate the same power as the actual filter would have. Naturally, when we are dealing
with communication systems, we generally consider ideal filters. So in ideal cases, we take Hmax as
unity and the equivalent bandwidth becomes the filter bandwidth, W and hence the expression for
noise power reduces to

Pn0 = N0 W

Effect of Noise on DSB-SC AM

Let us now discuss the effects of noise on DSB-SC AM. We transmit the signal,

s(t) = Ac m(t)cos(2πfc t + ϕc )

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Now, while we are transmitting this, at the receiver end, some noise will get added to the signal. So
we receive the signal as

r(t) = s(t) + n(t)

= Ac m(t)cos(2πfc t + ϕc ) + nc (t)cos(2πfc t) − ns (t)sin(2πfc t)

where, nc (t) and ns (t) are in-phase and quadrature components of n(t) respectively.

Now, after you receive the transmitted signal, the first thing you will do is pass it through a bandpass
signal centered around fc with some finite bandwidth. The noise in the expression of r(t) is the
noise you get after doing that. In other words, n(t) is a noise signal that is centered around fc . Now
we demodulate the received signal by first multiplying r(t) by a locally generated sinusoid, which
yields y(t) as

y(t) = r(t)cos(2πfc t + ϕ)
1 1 1
= Ac m(t)cos(ϕc − ϕ) + Ac m(t)cos(4πfc t + ϕc + ϕ) + [nc (t)cos(ϕ) + ns (t)sin(ϕ)]
2 2 2
1
+ [nc (t)cos(4πfc t + ϕ) − ns (t)sin(4πfc t + ϕ)]
2

Now passing this signal through an ideal lowpass filter having a bandwidth W . The lowpass filter
rejects the double frequency components and passes only the lowpass components. So we get the
output y(t) as

Ac 1
y(t) = m(t)cos(ϕc − ϕ) + [nc (t)cosϕ + ns (t)sinϕ]
2 2
Now phase is a relative quantity, so we can assume ϕ = 0 and accordingly adjust the carrier signal
phase ϕc . So the above expression gets reduced to

Ac 1
y(t) = m(t)cos(ϕc ) + nc (t)
2 2
So finally, this is the signal that I receive and I am interested in what? The ratio of the signal power
to the noise power. Let, the message signal, m(t) have power Pm . So signal power is given by

1 2 2
P0 = A cos (ϕc )Pm
4 c
And the noise power is given by
Z ∞
1 N0 W
Pn 0 = Snn (f ) df =
4 −∞ 2

where Snn (f ) is the power spectral density of the noise and is given by

N0

2 , |f − fc | ≤ W
Snn (f ) =
0, otherwise

So now we can calculate the signal to noise ratio.

P0 A2 cos2 (ϕc )Pm

SN R = = c
Pn 0 2N0 W

So, now we see that if there is a phase synchronization error, ϕc and if it is zero, we are very happy as
the value of SNR is the maximum in that case. We have initially established that the performance of
our perceptual quality depends on signal to noise ratio. So the important thing to take out from this
discussion is that we need not operate in a zero noise condition. A zero noise condition is practically
impossible to achieve. We just have to maximize the SNR.

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Self-explanatory Figures

Figure 1: Carrier signal, c(t) = 2cos(2000πt)

Figure 2: Message signal, m(t) = cos(20πt)

Figure 3: Transmitted AM signal, s(t) = 2m(t)cos(2000πt)

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 Figure 4: Received signal with noise, r(t) = s(t) + n(t)

Figure 5: Demodulated signal, y(t) = r(t)cos(2000πt)

Figure 6: Lowpass filtered signal y(t)

Figure 7: Variation of Final Output Signal with Noise Power