PRE -EMPHASIS AND DE-EMPHASIS

Vaibhav Kaushik
16/IEE/056
Pre-emphasis

 Pre-emphasis refers to boosting the relative

amplitudes of modulating voltage for higher
audio frequencies from 2 to approximately 15
KHz.
 It increases the amplitude of high frequency
bands and decrease the amplitudes of lower
bands.
Need for pre-emphasis ?
Pre-emphasis is not really required, it was introduced many years
ago when limited computing resources forced developers to
create tricky methods. It was noted that higher frequencies are
more important for signal disambiguation than lower
frequencies. In those days it would be easier to apply analog pre-
emphasis filter to get slightly better results so the pre-emphasis
become popular. Another good property of pre-emphasis is that
it helps to deal with DC offset which is often present in
recordings and thus it can improve energy-based voice activity
detection.
Modern speech recognition do not require pre-emphasis. Pre-
emphasis is compensated on later stages with channel
normalization like cepstral mean normalization so it should have
no effect at all. It is an artifact from a older system design.
Pre-emphasis Circuit
Explanation of pre-emphasis
circuit
 At the transmitter, the modulating signal is passed
through a simple network which amplifies the high
frequency components more than the low frequency
components. Time constant (RC) = 75 microseconds .
This circuit has a cutoff frequency = 2122Hz. This means
that frequencies higher than 2122 Hz will be linearly
enhanced. The output amplitude increases with a
frequency at a rate of 6 dB per octave. This pre-emphasis
circuit increases the energy content of higher frequency
signals so that they will tend to become stronger than
the high frequency noise components . This improves
signal to noise ratio and increases intelligibility and
fidelity.
De-emphasis

 De emphasis means attenuating those

frequencies by the amount by which they are
boosted.
 Pre-emphasis is done at the transmitter and
the de-emphasis is done at the receiver.
 The purpose is to improve signal to noise
ratio for FM reception.
De-emphasis Circuit
Explanation of de-emphasis
circuit
 To return the frequency to its normal level , a de-
emphasis circuit is used at the receiver. This is a
simple low pass filter with a constant of 75 micro
seconds.
 The figure features a cutoff of 2122 Hz and
causes signals above the frequency to be
attenuated at the rate of 6bB per octave.
 The pre-emphasis at the transmitter is exactly
offset by the de-emphasis circuit in the receiver ,
providing a normal frequency response.
 Conclusion
The combined effect of pre
emphasis and de emphasis is to
increase the high frequency
components during transmission
so that they will be stronger and
not masked by noise.
THANK YOU