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FACULTY OF ENGINEERING
AMPLITUDE MODULATION
Double sideband large carrier (DSB-LC)..p611 1.2 Double sideband suppressed carrier (DSB-SC)p11-16 1.3 Single sideband (SSB)p16-19 1.4 Conclusion ...p20 Chapter 2: Labview Design.p21-30 2.1 Genreal Introduction..p21 2.2 Project Implemantationp22-27 2.3 Graphical Interface..p27-30 2.4 Conclusion p30 Chapter 3: Telecommunication experiments...p31-48 3.1 The Generation of an AM signalp31-37 3.2 Double sideband modulationp37-43 3.3 Single sideband generationp43-48 Conclusionp48
Introduction
One of the most important inventions that mankind has reached is Telecommunications which consist of the communication between people over significant distances by electronic means. It allows the transmission of words, sounds, images, or data in the form of electronic or electromagnetic signals or impulses. Telecommunication dominates the major part of human life, in terms of consolidating the social relationship, contributing on educational mean, and providing many other services that help reduce the distances between people and makes the world very small.
The analog communication systems were the fundamental step toward the evolution of this field. Even though the communication systems have been greatly evolved since then, the analog systems, in particular AM and FM communication systems, still inevitable for transmitting the signal over a long distance.
We propose an educationally designed software application that exposes the students to the fundamental concept of AM communications and propels them to explore its characteristics, strengths and weaknesses.
Thus, our BS project is about Amplitude modulation/demodulation or AM, which is a type of common analog modulation techniques, and it is a part of telecommunications.
We have done our project using important software which is LabView. The reasons of choosing this software are its important and efficient benefits; some of them are: It is powerful, flexible and scalable design. It is easy to learn, use, maintain and upgrade. It supports wide variety of data acquisition and embedded control devices. It has ability to solve and execute complex algorithms in real time. Same tools are used in academia and industry.
Our project has an educational benefit. It helps students in general and telecommunication students specifically, to experience and understand the amplitude modulation. We will analyze AM, DSB-SC and SSB. We will provide a simple graphical interface easy to understand and use.
Our report is divided into three chapters; each chapter contains necessary ideas and important subjects in order to develop more the knowledge about AM and the main benefits and goals of this issue.
The first chapter is dedicated to the theoretical part about the amplitude modulation and demodulation; it includes brief description about the three types of modulation that we are going to simulate.
The second chapter is devoted about LabView design and interface; it includes information about each block diagram: definition, importance, and role.
The third chapter of our project involves three experiments one on each type of modulation simulated by our developed software application on LabView, in order to illustrate all information and theoretical knowledge about AM communication.
The first experiment is AM-LC The second one is AM-SC The last experiment is AM-SSB
which is equivalent to adding a carrier component to a DSB-SC signal, hence the name DSB-LC (large carrier).
Fig.1.1- Modulation
In DSB-LC, high energy at the carrier frequency is relieved. This energy comes from the amplitude A being modulated by the carrier frequency. This results in the modulated signal with envelope similar to the message signal.
m = modulation index
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Alternatively, percentage modulation is obtained by multiplying m by 100% to obtain the number in percentage form: Percentage modulation = m x 100% The modulation index m should always > 0 and < 1. If m = 0, the resultant modulated waveform is just a constant envelope of amplitude A, the amplitude of the carrier frequency. There is no modulation of the carrier wave. If m > 1, the resultant waveform is over modulated and is distorted.
Trapezoidal display
Among the methods presented for determining the modulation index, the trapezoidal method is probably the most common. When the modulating signal is voice or music, the modulation index is constantly changing, but the trapezoid pattern provides a uniform display and allows meaningful measurements. Modulation index: m= (A-B) / (A+B) When the peak amplitude of the message signal equals the peak amplitude of the unmodulated carrier, 100% modulation is obtained. Figure 1.2 shows the AM waveforms and trapezoidal patterns for m equal to 0.5 and 1.0.
Fig 1.2- AM waveforms and trapezoidal patterns for m equal to 0.5 and 1.0.
Overmodulation (m>1) occurs when the modulating signal has a peak amplitude greater than that of the unmodulated carrier. The modulation index is directly related to power and efficiency in AM communications. At 100% modulation each sideband frequency has amplitude equal to one-half of the carrier amplitude. When overmodulation occurs both sides of the modulation envelope cross over the zero reference line. This causes distortion in the receiver and interference with other stations, because frequencies outside the assigned bandwidth of the over modulating station are produced. Figure 1.3 illustrates overmodulation and shows the extra sideband frequencies which are produced.
PT = Pc + PSB ;
The fraction of the total power that is contained in the sidebands is a measure of the transmission efficiency (). In equation form this can be expressed as = PSB / PT . Since PSB is directly related to the modulation index (m), the ratio PSB / PT, and the theoretical efficiency, can be determined from the modulation index using the following equation:
The maximum DSB-LC efficiency is obtained at m = 1. For a 100% percentage modulation, it is found that = 33%. This means that the maximum transmission efficiency only results in one-third of the power being used to transmit the information. The remaining 67% of the power is "wasted" in sending the carrier.
1.2.4 - Demodulation of AM :
Amplitude modulation, AM, is one of the most straightforward ways of modulating a radio signal or carrier. The process of demodulation, where the audio signal is removed from the radio carrier in the receiver is also quite simple as well. The easiest method of achieving amplitude demodulation is to use a simple diode detector. This consists of just a handful of components: a diode, resistor and a capacitor.
In the circuit above, the diode rectifies the signal, allowing only half of the alternating waveform through. The capacitor is used to store the charge and provide a smoothed output from the detector, and also to remove any unwanted radio frequency components. The resistor is used to enable the capacitor to discharge. If it was not there and no other load was present, then the charge on the capacitor would not leak away, and the circuit would reach a peak and remain there.
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1.3.1- Modulation:
Note that a(t) is the modulated signal that results from a cosine wave being multiplied (or modulated) by a modulating baseband signal that contains the information to be transmitted, or m(t).
In the Figure below, the carrier is assumed to have amplitude of 1 and the modulating signal is assumed to have the amplitude Am. When these two are multiplied, or modulated, the amplitudes of the resulting signals are half of the product of the two individual amplitudes, or
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1.3.1- Sidebands:
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In Figure 1.9 the peak voltage of the modulated signal is half the peak voltage of the modulating signal. There are two sidebands and it is important to use rms voltages for computing power. The expression for the average power of a DSB-SC modulated signal is hence P = 2.(Am/ 1.3.4-Demodulation of DSB-SC: In DSB-SC the carrier frequency is suppressed, extra circuitry is required to locate and track the carrier and hence increase the cost of the receiver. A coherent demodulator must be used. The local oscillator present in the demodulator generates a carrier which has same frequency and phase as that of the carrier in the modulated signal. )2 / R = Am2/4R
If the demodulator has constant phase, the original signal is reconstructed by passing v(t) through an LPF.
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In practice it is simpler and easier to start with DSB, since this type of modulation is obtained directly when a message signal is combined with an RF carrier through a balance mixer. To produce an SSB signal, all that remains to do is filter out one of the sidebands before the RF signal is transmitted. The figure below shows a functional diagram for generating an SSB signal.
The message signal is combined with the Beat Frequency Oscillator (BFO) signal, thus producing a DSB output centered at the BFO frequency. Sideband selection begins by adjusting the BFO frequency within its 450-460 kHz range. This causes the frequency contents of the message signal to be shifted relative to the pass band of the fixed IF filter. Since the 455 kHz IF filter has a narrow 6 kHz bandwidth and sharp roll-off characteristics, the effect of frequency displacement is to push one of the sidebands outside the pass band of the IF filter. Once the desired sideband has been selected, the SSB signal is frequency-translated up to the carrier frequency determined by the Variable Frequency Oscillator.
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1.4.2 Demodulation: In demodulation technique, the receiver must reverse the operations performed by the transmitter in order to recover the original information. The figure below shows the functional block diagram for demodulating SSB signal.
Note that VFO and BFO in the receiver must be the same as in the transmitter for correct demodulation.
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Conclusion:
There are several advantages of amplitude modulation that is why it is still in widespread use today:
It is simple to implement it can be demodulated using a circuit consisting of very few components AM receivers are very cheap as no specialized components are needed.
It is not efficient in terms of its power usage It is not efficient in terms of its use of bandwidth, requiring a bandwidth equal to twice that of the highest audio frequency
It is prone to high levels of noise because most noise is amplitude based and obviously AM detectors are sensitive to it. These disadvantages caused the creation of DSB-SC modulation. It presents power efficiency
over AM modulation since no loss of power in the carrier anymore. Yet, the bandwidth requirements still the same. Moreover DSB demodulation needs a complex receiver that is more expensive than the AM receiver. Concerning the bandwidth requirements, the SSB modulation came to solve this problem. But SSB needs a complex transmitter and receiver.
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LabView programs are partially similar to some main functions, subroutines, and programs such as FORTRAN, PASCAL, C, and so on. The Virtual Instrument (VI) includes thwo important parts namely:
Front Panel: It is a user interface of a Virtual Instrument. It has the capability to stimulate the Front Panel of a Physical Instrument.
Block Diagram or Wiring Diagram: It is the source code of Virtual Instrument developed in LabView Graphical Programming Language named G. It is described as the Actual Executable Program.
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The waveform graph shows the modulated signal. However, the waveform graph 2 shows the spectrum of the modulated signal. The VI used before it (called Power) gives the power spectrum density of a signal. The message signal is got from a VI called based function generator. It gives sine wave, sawtooth, square wave and triangular wave. However the carrier is got from a unit called sine waveform.
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Notice that DSB-SC is generated from this design by giving a very small value (near 0) to the carrier amplitude (Ac). Moving to the SSB generation, it consists of adding Ac to the message signal. Usually Ac should be near 0 since SSB is designed to have benefits on DSB-SC by reducing the bandwidth of transmission. Therefore, we do not want to go back to power loss in carrier. After adding Ac, we multiply the signal by a sine wave signal of amplitude 1 and frequency FBFO. We obtain 2 sidebands around the BFO frequency. We make the signal then pass by a band pass filter (centered at 455KHZ) in order to remove one of the sidebands. After that we multiply the signal by another sine wave signal of amplitude 1 and frequency FVFO in order to move the spectrum to high frequency for transmission. At the end we multiply the signal by a constant called RF gain for the same reason as AM modulation. The figure below shows the labview schematic of the SSB generation.
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Now lets move to the demodulation part. In AM modulation, the message signal corresponds to the envelope of the modulated signal. Therefore, we used an envelope detector (peak detector) in AM demodulation. The Envelope Detection was built using the two LabView VIs: peak detector and waveform builder. The peak detect can be set to identify either valleys or peaks; for our purpose we set it to peaks. The waveform builder reconstructs the signal using three variables: . Peak values: retrieved from the output of the peak detector. . Start time: set to 0 . Frequency of the signal: from theory, the frequency of the demodulated signal is the same as that of the carrier frequency. The figure below shows AM demodulation in Labview.
Fig 2.3
AM demodulation
On the other hand, when talking about DSB modulation, the message signal corresponds to the line traced through alternate lobes. Then an envelope detector cannot do the demodulation job. We need a costas loop detector. Designing this loop is very hard in labview and even impossible since it
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contains some basic components that are not present. Therefore we made use of a DSB demodulator ( a component already existing in labview) to do the job.
Fig 2.4
DSB demodulation
We made the modulated signal pass by a component called (MT-Down convert) in order to make it a suitable waveform that can be demodulated by the demodulator. We need to specify a pass band bandwidth for this component greater than the carrier frequency that has been used. Moreover, we have to push on the DSB button (DSB-SC) to specify that we want DSB-SC demodulation. Finally, the SSB reception is not other than reverse of the operations performed by the transmitter. Figure 2.5 shows the functional block representation of the manner in which the SSB receiver reverses the
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Fig 2.5
SSB demodulation
Frequency-translation of the incoming RF signal is fairly straight-forward, being just a matter of tuning the VFO to exactly the same frequency as that used by the transmitter. The IF signal present at the output of the IF filter ( filter centered at 455 KHZ-see fig above) represents the transmitted sideband, either the LSB or the USB. The next step in demodulating is translating the message signal spectrum back to its proper position in the frequency spectrum. This is done by multiplying it by the BFO frequency which should be the same as BFO-TX in order to conserve the spectral relationship between the BFO and the USB that has been established at the transmitter. Finally we put a low pass filter to remove any glitches that can appear.
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These pictures are taken from the front panel of our application. You can see that any telecom student can manage easily to use our software to perform amplitude modulation. The rest of the equipments are shown below.
Fig 2.8
AM/DSB Receiver
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2.4- Conclusion:
At the end, the goal of our project can be summarized in 2 main ideas: 1- Making engineering students familiar with the labview software. 2- Presenting an advanced and sophisticated method of showing amplitude modulation. We hope that you understood all the steps that we passed through in our design. We are going in the next part to analyze some experiments that can be done using this software application.
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2-After, keeps the RF gain constant while varying the carrier level. Then keep the carrier level constant and vary the RF gain. Describe the effects that each step has on the waveform. First, varying Ac does not affect the envelope of the modulated signal. However, when we have Ac< Am we will have over modulation. Moreover, when Ac=Am we will have 100% modulation.
Fig 3.2-a
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On the other hand, when varying RF gain, the amplitude of the envelope varies proportionally to it since the formula of the modulation is:
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To view the carrier frequency only, we need to give Am a value near 0 (Am=0.1 for ex) and then we will see on the graph of the modulated signal only the carrier frequency as well as seeing it on the
spectrum also
Fig 3.1.3-a Carrier signal
Fig 3.1.3-b
Carrier spectrum
7- On the function generator, change the sine wave function to square wave, saw tooth and all the other functions. Describe what you see on the AM waveform and plot it. . We will see that the envelope of the AM waveform has the same shape as the message signal. The plots will be:
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8- Calculate the modulation index. m=Am/Ac= 2/4= 0.5. Note that they are other methods of calculating the modulation index. We talked about some of them in ch1 of the report and we gave examples. Moreover, the modulation index must be <1. If m=1 100% modulation (see fig 3.1.2-b). if m>1 over modulation (see fig 3.1.2-a). 9- On the AM/DSB receiver, choose fc(R)= 500KHz. Observe the demodulated signal for each of the 4 functions(sine wave-triangular). . The demodulated signal has the same shape and same frequency as the message signal for all the functions. At the end of the experiment, turn all control knobs to their min position.
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Amplitude: Am=2 V On the AM/DSB/SSB generator choose carrier frequency fc (M) = 600K, carrier level Ac=0.01V, and RF gain=1. Finally, on the AM/DSB receiver choose fc(R) = 600K, and press the AM/DSB button. Run the program. First observe the modulated signal and plot it.
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2- For AM waveform, the envelope of the RF waveform corresponds to the message signal. What do you notice about the correspondence between the DSB waveform and the message signal? . The line traced through alternate lobes of the DSB waveform represents the message signal. 3- Vary Ac on the AM/DSB/SSB Generator between min and max and return it to the min position. What effect does it have on the RF waveform? . First we will have normal DSB, then AM waveform but in over modulation, then AM waveform with 100% modulation (when Ac=Am=2). At the end, we will have normal AM waveform when Ac becomes greater than 2 till reaching its maximum value. 4- Vary Ac between min and max and record the difference in dB between both levels. This difference corresponds to the carrier suppression in dB. . First when Ac=0.01 (min), Pc (min) = 4*10-5 w= -43.97 dB (PdB=10log10(Pw)).
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Fig 3.2.3
Carrier suppression = Pc (max) Pc (min) = 60.5 dB. 5- Double the amplitude of the message signal (Am). What changes can you see in the DSB spectrum? What can u conclude about the RF power? .when increasing Am, the power of sidebands increase, then the RF power increases. In AM, 2/3 of the power is wasted in carrier power, however here in DSB
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the total RF power consists of sidebands power mainly (carrier power very small). Therefore, when increasing Am the total power increases in greater proportion than in AM case. 6- Return all controls to their original position as in the beginning of the experiment. Look now at the demodulated signal using the DSB detector. You will see it exactly the same as the original message signal but shifted because of a little delay in time (signal passes through steps before demodulation).
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7- Try the demodulation for the other functions (square wave-saw tooth...) . When using square wave or saw tooth, there is some distortion in the demodulated signal since their frequency spectrum represent infinite pulses. Then the detection of the signal is harder than the sine wave case. 8- Push off the DSB button. Plot the result of the demodulation. . You will obtain only the positive part of the message signal with a frequency approximately twice of fm.
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9- Look at the spectrum of the DSB waveform. Does it have bandwidth advantage over AM? . DSB modulation does not have bandwidth advantages over AM since we still have 2 sidebands and the distance between them is 2 fm exactly as in AM modulation. At the end of the experiment, turn all control knobs to their min position.
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For FBFO=452.75 KHz, the upper sideband is located at f=455 KHz and the lower at f= 450.5 KHz. 2- Observe the frequency spectrum of the signal at the IF Output (4). Describe it and explain what happened. . The IF filter has a pass band of: 452 KHz-458 KHz. After filtering, only the upper sideband is passed. The lower sideband is filtered. (see fig below).
3- Adjust fBFO to 455 KHz using the BFO tuning control. Explain what happened to the frequency spectrum. . For fBFO= 455 KHz, we have fusb= 457.25 and flsb= 452.75. These two frequencies are located in the pass band of the IF filter, then we will have a DSB signal at the IF output. (See fig. below).
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4- With fBFO=455 KHz, increase fm to 4 KHz. Explain the changes in the frequency spectrum. . In this case, we have fUSB= 458.5 KHz, and fLSB= 451.5 KHz. Both are outside the range of the filter, then we have only fBFO that passes. USB and LSB are filtered.
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5- Go back to initial specifications (as in problem 1). Moreover, on the AM/DSB/SSB Generator choose fVFO=4355 KHz, and RF Gain2 = 2. Observe the SSB spectrum and plot it. . The plot should be similar to the one below.
6- On the SSB receiver, choose fVFO=4355 KHz, fBFO=452.75 KHz, and IF amplifier=12. Observe the demodulated signal. . The demodulated signal has the same shape and same frequency as the message signal.
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Fig 3.3.6-a
Demodulated signal
7 - Vary fm. What happens to fdem? . Fdem varies proportionally with fm. 8- On the SSB receiver, choose fBFO= 457250 instead of the previous value. Repeat the previous two steps.
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. For the new value of fBFO, the demodulated signal has same shape and frequency of the message signal. However, a sideband reversal happened at this case. We were sending upper sideband, but we demodulated lower sideband. Therefore when increasing fm, fdem decreases and vice versa. At the end of the experiment, turn all control knobs to their min position.
Conclusion
At the end, we hope that you like our software application. We did our best to make it as simple as possible. There are many experiments that can be performed using it. What we present was only few ideas of what can be done. Finally we want to thank our advisor, and the two moderators for all the help that they gave us during the semester.
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