FACULTY OF ELECTRONIC AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING
UNIVERSITI TEKNIKAL MALAYSIA MELAKA
    FAKULTI KEJURUTERAAN ELEKTRONIK DAN
                BENG 3211
          KEJURUTERAAN KOMPUTER
     ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING LAB 3
                    BENG 3211
      ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING LAB 3
LAB 2 : AMPLITUDE MODULATION (AM)
    LAB 2: Amplitude Modulation (AM)
     Department of Electronic Engineering
1.0   Objectives
      Generation of modulation and demodulation of an Amplitude Modulation (AM) signal
      using MATLAB.
2.0   Theory
      Amplitude Modulation (AM) is a process that a high-frequency carrier signal is modulated
      by a low-frequency modulating signal (usually an audio). In amplitude modulation the
      carrier amplitude varies with the modulating amplitude, as shown in Figure 5.1.
       Vmax
         Vmin
                                          Figure 5.1: AM signal
      If the audio signal is Vm cos(2f m t ) and the carrier signal is Vc cos(2f c t ) , the amplitude-
      modulated signal can be expressed by:
                                            V AM (t )  Vc 1  ma cos(2f m t )cos(2f c t )               (5.1)
      where Vm = audio amplitude                   Vc = carrier amplitude
                f m = audio frequency               f c = carrier frequency
                m a= modulation index = Vm / Vc
      Rewriting (5.1), we obtain
                             1
                  V AM (t )  Vc ma cos(2 ( f c  f m )t )  cos(2 ( f c  f m )t )  Vc cos(2f c t )   (5.2)
                             2
The first term on the right side of (5.2) represents double sideband signal and the second
term is the carrier signal. According to (5.2), we can plot the spectrum of AM modulated
signal as shown in Figure 5.2.
                        Figure 5.2: Spectrum of AM signal
In an AM transmission the carrier frequency and amplitude always remain constant, while
the sidebands are constantly varying in frequency and amplitude. Thus, the carrier
contains no information since it never changes. This means that the carrier power is a
pure dissipation when transmitting an AM signal. Thus, the transmitting efficiency of
amplitude modulation is lower than that of double-sideband suppressed carrier (DSB-SC)
modulation, but the amplitude demodulator circuit is simpler.
The m a in (5.1), called modulation index or depth of modulation, is an important
parameter. When m is a percentage, it is usually called percentage modulation. It is
defined as
                                        Vm
                                 ma        100%                                    (5.3)
                                        VC
It is difficult to measure the ADC in a practical circuit so that the modulation index is
generally calculated by:
                                        Vmax  Vmin
                                 ma                 100%                           (5.4)
                                        Vmax  Vmin
where Vmax  Vc  Vm and Vmin  Vc  Vm , as indicated in Figure 5.1.
As mentioned above, audio signal is contained in the sidebands so that the greater the
sideband signals the better the transmitting efficiency. From (5.2), we can also find that
      the greater the modulation index, the greater the sideband signals and the better the
      transmitting efficiency. In practice, the modulation index is usually less or equal to 1. If m
      a>   1, it is called over modulation.
3.0   Procedure
      Design the Simulink Model of AM modulation and demodulation. As it is clearly seen that
      the AM model is exactly based upon the mathematical foundation provided in the
      theoretical section. Based on the model, execute the output at the AM Modulator and at the
      AM Demodulator as the result of this experiment.
4.0   Discussion and Conclusion
      Discuss the steps taken to generate the output waveform of AM for modulation process
      and demodulation process. Conclude your observation as the conclusion.