Article series of the Signals Research Laboratory, February, 2024 1

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Article series of the Signals Research Laboratory, February, 2024 2

Random Demodulator
Nimisha T M,† and G. Abhilash‡

1 Introduction
Compressed Sampling (CS) deals with sparse or compressible signals and
N
attains the samples at rates O(Klog( K )), where K is the sparsity of the
signal and N its Nyquist rate (or the dimension of the signal under classical
sampling). Note that in the class, we have identified the minimum number
of measurements (m) required for the correct recovery with high probabil-
ity as 2K, where K is the sparsity of the signal. In practice, we keep the
N
number of measurements (m) more than 2K as O(Klog( K )). These samples
are obtained by projecting the signal to a measurement matrix which sat-
isfies the RIP and incoherence properties. It has been seen that a random
measurement matrix satisfies these conditions and hence is a good choice.
This concept is being made use of in Random Demodulator (RD), which is a
technique to convert analog compressible signals to compressed discrete form
[1]-[4]
The signal of interest, mainly wide-band in nature, is demodulated using
a pseudo random sequence which is generated at a rate equal to or above
Nyquist rate, such that the spectrum of the signal is shifted to the low pass
region. Now, a low pass filtering is done using an integrator and the signal
so obtained is sampled using low rate ADC. The set up of such a sampler is
shown in Figure 1 [4].
∗
This article has been prepared as part of the Signals Research Laboratory activity at
NIT Calicut.
†
Dr. Nimisha was an Algorithm Development Engineer at KLA-TENCOR, Chennai
at the time of preparing this article.
‡
Associate Professor, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, NIT
Calicut.
Article series of the Signals Research Laboratory, February, 2024 3

1 1
Figure 1: Single channel Random Demodulator [4]. Note: R
= N
in the text.

The main advantage of such a system is that it bypasses the need for high
rate ADC. But the price paid for this is a highly non-linear reconstruction
algorithm at the receiver. But this is acceptable because almost all acqui-
sition systems have power constraints (e.g. satellites). So our sampler has
to be less power consuming and easy to implement. But receiver complexity
and power consumption can be afforded since they are placed at the earth
stations.

Random Demodulator (RD) describes a way to compressively sample ana-

log signals directly. It performs three basic actions: demodulation, lowpass
filtering and low rate sampling. The result of these actions are depicted in
Figure 2 [2].

2 RD in matrix form
A sparse signal (sparsity K) with bandwidth N2 Hz can be time-discretized
by sampling at N Hz as stipulated by the classical sampling theorem. But
N
the information content is only M = O(Klog( K )). Thus sampling rate can
be reduced to M . RD maps a continuous signal to discrete samples at a rate
as small as M .

It can be formulated in matrix form for discrete simulation. The first step
is to find a discrete representation of the analog signal space. This is done
Rt +1
by averaging the signal over a time interval of N1 given by xn = tnn N f (t)dt
Article series of the Signals Research Laboratory, February, 2024 4

Figure 2: Results of basic operations in RD [2]

where tn = Nn . This is equivalent to sampling at Nyquist rate. After ob-

taining the discrete representation, the next step is to find an appropriate
sparsifying basis for xn such that, x = Ψs, where Ψ is sparsifying matrix
and s is the sparse representation. This is followed by random demodulation
and low pass filtering. The action of demodulator can be represented as a
mapping from x → Dx, where D is a diagonal matrix of size N × N with
diagonal entries from a pseudo random sequence. The accumulate and dump
action is depicted by H matrix. Suppose M = 3 and N = 6 the matrix H is
 
1 1 0 0 0 0
H = 0 0 1 1 0 0 (1)
0 0 0 0 1 1
N
In general, H matrix has M rows and N columns and each row has M 1’s.
The matrix Φ = HD describes the action of demodulation and accumulation
together. The measurements are given by

y = Φx = ΦΨs = As (2)

where A is called the Random Demodulator matrix.

Once random measurements are obtained, the next question is about the
reconstruction of the original signal from these measurements exploiting the
knowledge of sparsity. This is done, in general, using non-linear optimization
Article series of the Signals Research Laboratory, February, 2024 5

techniques. A linear optimization technique, mainly l1 -norm minimization,

can be converted to a linear programming problem and solved using the
simplex method.

2.1 Experimental Results and Observation

A signal which is the sum of three sine waves with distinct integer frequen-
cies is given as input. The sparsifying matrix Ψ is chosen as Fourier ba-
sis and it is created by sampling frequencies from 0 - 100 in steps of 0.01.
Frequency resolution is set to unity because fractional resolution adversely
alters incoherence property. The signal is operated upon by Φ to obtain the
measurements. At the receiver, the signal is recovered through optimization
using simplex method. The input signal is a linear combination of sine waves
with frequencies {10, 20, 30} Hz. The Nyquist rate is 60 Hz but signal is
reconstructed from 17 measurements as shown in Figure 3. The results show
that there is a significant reduction in the number of samples needed for
reconstruction compared to Nyquist rate.

(a) (b)

Figure 3: (a)Original signal with frequencies {10 20 30} Hz (b)Reconstructed

signal from M = 17
Article series of the Signals Research Laboratory, February, 2024 6

3 Polyphase Random Demodulator

The main drawback of single channel RD is that the pseudo random sequence
pc (t) has to be generated at Nyquist rate. The reason for this is, to shift the
spectrum to low pass region the modulating signal should have a spectrum
much wider than the input signal. Thus the sampling rate should be at least
the Nyquist rate of input signal. This can be overcome by using multiple
channels. In this case pi (t); i = 0, 1, ..J − 1 can be generated at rate NJ where
J is number of channels or rails. The sampler is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Polyphase Random Demodulator [4]

At each channel sample and hold (S/H) action is delayed by an amount

j
of j = 0,1,2...J − 1 and sampled at rate NJ . Thus pi (t) has to be produced
J
only at rate NJ . Accumulate and dump is done by multiplication with Φ
matrix with dimension M × N , M is the number of measurements required
and N is Nyquist rate.

 
1 1 −1 0 0 0
Φ=
0 0 0 −1 1 −1
Each column corresponds to each rail in Figure 4. The operation with
Φ is equivalent to keeping an integrator at the output of the adder shown
in Figure 4. The action of Φ on x gives the random measurements at sub-
Nyquist rate.
Article series of the Signals Research Laboratory, February, 2024 7

3.1 Experimental Results and Observation

A summed sinusoid of three frequencies is given as input. The representa-
tion matrix Ψ is designed as mentioned in single channel case and number
of rails is taken as 5. The sampling rate is reduced to N5 at each channel.
Measurements are taken by projecting the sampled value to pi (t) which is
also generated at NJ rate. The input is a linear combination of three sinusoids
three with frequencies [5 10 14] Hz and it is reconstructed from 13 measure-
ments as shown in Figure 5, which is only 50 percent of Nyquist rate (28
samples).

The results show that the Random Demodulator can efficiently sample
the sparse signals at sub Nyquist rates. A recovery algorithm can recover
the sparse set of representing coefficients from the measurement vector and
reconstruct the original signal from the recovered representing coefficients
with high probability.

(a) (b)

Figure 5: (a)Original signal with frequencies = {5 10 14} Hz

(b)Reconstructed signal from M = 13

4 Summary
A method for compressively sampling analog signals is presented in this chap-
ter. It makes use of the concept of Random Demodulator which leads to a
Article series of the Signals Research Laboratory, February, 2024 8

probable architecture for hardware realization. A matrix formulation of the

scheme, for simulation purpose, is also presented. The RD method calls for
generation of pseudo-random sequence at a rate greater than or equal to the
Nyquist rate of the signal being sampled. This requirement is overcome by
resorting to Polyphase RD, which has been explained with supporting simu-
lation results.

Having obtained the measurements at sub-Nyquist rate at the output of

RD, our next aim should be to find an appropriate recovery algorithm to get
back the signal.

References
[1] Jason N. Laska, Sami Kirolos, Marco F. Duarte, Tamer S. Ragheb,
Richard G. Baraniuk, Yehia Massoud, “Theory and Implementation
of an Analog-to-Information Converter using Random Demodulation,”
IEEE Proc ISCAS May 2007.

[2] Andrew Harms, Waheed U Bajwa and Robert Calderbank, “Beating

Nyquist through Correlation: A constrained Random Demodulator for
Sampling of Sparse Bandlimited Signals,” IEEE International confer-
ence on ICASSP, 2011.

[3] Tamer Ragheb, Jason N Laska, Hamid Netaji, Sami Kirolos, Richard
G. Baraniuk and Yehia Massoud, “A prototype hardware for Random
Demodulation based conversion Analog-to-Digital Conversion,” Confer-
ence paper, IEEE Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems, August
2008.

[4] Jason N. Laska, J. P. Slavinsky, Richard G. Baraniuk, “The Polyphase

Random Demodulator for Wideband Compressive Sensing,” Conference
paper ASILOMAR Nov 2011.