CCE3320 - COMMUNICATIONS THEORY FOR ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS

Design and Implementation of a 1 MHz AM

Transmitter and Receiver
Antoine Cini, Marlon Galea
I.

ABSTRACT THEORY

We had to design and implement a 1 MHz AM Transmitter

and Receiver. The audio signal was captured by using a
condenser microphone. Then the signal from the microphone
was amplified and mixed with the carrier signal (oscillator).
An antenna that had around 80 mW, was used to transmit the
signal to the receiver. Then, the received signal was used as an
input to the mixer, together with the output signal from a local
oscillator, that down converts the AM into an Intermediate
Frequency of 100 kHz. The signal was finally filtered and
passed through an envelope detector then through an amplifier
where it was amplified before being fed to the output device,
where we had a speaker of 8 1W.
Figure 1 below shows a block diagram of the whole system,
which includes the transmitter and receiver respectively.

The frequency was taken to be 1 MHz as requested, the

inductors were taken to be 4.7H, and therefore the value of
the capacitor was calculated using the formula below.
=

1
2

(1)

A variable capacitor in parallel with a fixed one was used to

fine-tune the frequency to exactly 1 MHz. The feedback signal
depends on the tapping of the inductor. The closer it is to the
collector, the larger is the amount of feedback. However, the
output from the collector is reduced. The base resistors are
used for the usual DC stabilization for the transistor biasing
while the capacitors act as DC blocking.
Figure 2 shows how the Hartley oscillator was setup to
produce the AM carrier wave.

Figure 2. 1 MHz oscillator circuit

b.
Figure 1. Block Diagram of the whole system

II.
a.

TRANSMITTER CIRCUIT

Oscillator

The first stage of the transmitter circuit is a Hartley oscillator

setup to produce the AM carrier wave. This consists of a split
inductor in parallel with a variable capacitor as the tuned
circuit. The center tapping is connected to the emitter while
the LC tank is connected to the collector of the bjt in our case
the BC 547.

Input signal Amplifier

The input signal from a condenser microphone had to be

amplified before it was modulated on to the carrier wave since
its amplitude was very small. This amplifier stage consists of
the integrated chip LM358 operational amplifier.
This IC consists of two high gain internally compensated
operational amplifiers, which can be operated from either a
single supply or dual supply configuration. In our case, only
one operational amplifier was used and it was configured for
using dual supplies 12V. This allows the input signal to be
amplified completely by our opamp. The opamp was
configured as a non-inverting amplifier circuit where the input
signal enters the non-inverting input(positive terminal of the
opamp) while the inverting input of the opamp was connected
to a feedback loop consisting of two resistors connected as a
voltage divider bias between the output and ground. The gain

CCE3320 - COMMUNICATIONS THEORY FOR ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS

of the amplifier could be adjusted by varying the resistance of

one of the resistors (denoted by R14 in the diagram below).
Figure 3 below shows the circuit diagram of this amplifier
stage.

The antenna used for transmission had a gain of around 80

mW. The transmitted signal consisted of a modulated signal
that will be received by the antenna of the receiver circuit at a
distance of approximately 30cm away. Therefore, we will be
using a quite low power consumption antenna for the
transmission of the signal. The antenna used was a small
simple wire antenna, which although not very efficient
provided a way of transmitting the AM signal to the receiver.
An efficient antenna would have had a wavelength /2 but that
would be a very large for our purpose.

III.
a.

Figure 3. Input signal amplifier circuit

c.

Modulator stage

This stage is the output stage of our transmitter circuit before

the antenna. It takes the carrier signal from the oscillator and
the output signal from the opamp amplifier and modulates the
signal onto the carrier wave. The amplitude of the carrier wave
is varied in proportion to the input signal. This circuit consists
of a tank circuit made up of a LC circuit tuned at a frequency
of 1 MHz . The outputs from the carrier and the opamp
amplifier are connected through a capacitor to the base input
of the modulator stage. The output from this stage is
connected to a coupling capacitor to the antenna.
Figure 4 shows the modulator circuit implemented.

RECIEVER CIRCUIT

Oscillator

The first stage of the receiver is a Hartley oscillator, the

sane like we used in the transmitter circuit. It consists of a
split inductor in parallel with a variable capacitor as the
tuned circuit. The center tapping is connected to the
emitter while the LC tank is connected to the collector of
the bjt in our case the BC 547.
For the design of this circuit, the following formula was
used:
=

1
2

(2)

The frequency was set to be 1 MHz as required to

produce the intermediate frequency of 100 KHz, the
inductors were chosen to be 4.7H, and therefore the
value of the capacitor was found. A variable capacitor
was connected across the fixed capacitor to fine-tune the
frequency to exactly 1 MHz

Figure 4. Modulator circuit

d.

Transmitter Antenna

Figure 5. 1 MHz Oscillator signal

CCE3320 - COMMUNICATIONS THEORY FOR ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS

b.

Receiver Antenna

The antenna receiver will be receiving the signal that is being

sent from the transmitter circuit along with noise. It will then
be fed to the mixer circuit. A simple wire antenna was used
for this purpose and it provided sufficient signal for the
receiver although not very efficient. An efficient antenna
would have had a wavelength /2 but that would be a very
large for our purpose.
c.

Mixer Circuitry

frequency to pass to the next stage of the receiver and block

any other unwanted frequencies.
In this case, the band pass filter consists of two passive filters
also known as RC circuits. One is acting as a low pass filter
while the other one is acting as the high pass filter. Together
they act as a band pass filter. The components values were
chosen such that the band pass frequencies are in the range
100 kHz.
Figure 7 shows the band pass filter circuitry

The received signal from the antenna had to be converted to an

intermediate frequency of 100 kHz. To do this, the AM signal
was mixed with that of the local oscillator in our case the
Hartley oscillator frequency in the mixer stage. This process is
called heterodyning. The resulting signal is the difference of
the two frequencies, which is also known as beat frequency.
This conversion is useful for several reasons. If several stages
of filters are used, they can be set to a fixed frequency. This
will simplify the design of the circuitry that will be needed to
be built and tuned. Another reason is that using a lower
frequency for transistor amplifiers will have a higher gain and
hence fewer stages would be needed. Very selective filters can
be more easily implemented at lower frequencies.
To produce this intermediate frequency, the received AM
signal was mixed with the output signal of the Hartley
oscillator in the mixer stage. This consists of a tank circuit at
the collector of a bjt transistor. The inputs to the mixer stage
consist of the Hartley oscillator signal connected to a capacitor
and then to the base of the mixer while the output of the
antenna is connected to the base of the transistor through
another capacitor.
Figure 6 below shows the circuit diagram of this stage.

Figure 7. Band pass Filter

e.

Envelope detector circuit

The main aim of this stage is to extract the original signal,

which is modulated on the carrier wave. The signal is first
rectified through the transistor and smoothed by the capacitor,
which is connected to the emitter of the envelope detector
transistor.
The transistor is configured as an emitter follower
configuration. The emitter follower is where the base is
receiving the input signal; the emitter will be the output leg in
this stage while the collector of the transistor is common to
both. The smoothing capacitor is connected across the output
resistor. The output is taken from the emitter through the
capacitor and a variable resistor. The variable resistor provides
a varying input signal to the next stage.
Figure 8 shows the circuit of this envelope detection stage and
how it is connected to the next stage.

Figure 6. The mixer

d.

Band-pass filter stage

The intermediate frequency stage can produce a variety of

frequencies including difference and sums of the oscillator
frequency and the input AM signal that is being received. We
are only interested in the difference (beat frequency). For this
reason, a band pass filter was used to allow only the difference

Figure 8. Envelope Detector

CCE3320 - COMMUNICATIONS THEORY FOR ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS

f.

Output Power Amplifier Stage

The output from the envelope detector was amplified and fed
to an 8 1W speaker. For this stage, we used the integrated
chip LM386. This is a low voltage power amplifier ideal for
this type of applications. It has an internally set gain of 20.
One can increase the gain of this amplifier by applying a
variable resistor between pins 1 and 8 however we used the
preset gain of 20.
After the signal has been amplified, it is fed to a speaker
through a capacitor. The speaker used has the following
parameters: 1W 8
Figure 9 below shows the circuit diagram for the amplifier and
how it was connected in our case.
Figure 11. The Output signal from the oscillator of MHz

Figure 9. Power stage circuit

IV.

RESULTS

The following graphs were captured from the oscilloscope

during the testing of the AM transmitter and receiver circuitry.
Figure 12. The amplified input signal from amplifier stage

Figure 10. Output signal from the microphone

Figure 13. Modulator output signal

CCE3320 - COMMUNICATIONS THEORY FOR ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS

Figure 14. Input signal received by antenna from the

antenna on the receiver circuit

Figure 15. 1 MHz oscillator signal of the receiver circuit

Figure 17.. Mixer Output signal

Figure 18. The envelope detector output signal

Figure 16. Filtered signal after band pass filter

Figure 19. Amplified signal going into the speaker

CCE3320 - COMMUNICATIONS THEORY FOR ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS

V.

PCB

VI.

CONCLUSION

The figure below shows the pcb layout of the AM transmitter

and that of the receiver

From this assignment, we learnt how to generate an AM

signal, transmit it and then receive the original signal.

For the Transmitter, the following layout was designed:

Some difficulties that we encountered during the design and

testing of the circuitry included the startup of the Colpitz
oscillator, which was then replaced by a Hartley oscillator.
The input signal amplifier was originally being built using a
bjt and later it was replaced by a non-inverting operational
amplifier design. Another problem was the envelope detector
where at first we were using a diode and resistor where it did
not work therefore we substituted for a bjt design.

Figure 20. Transmitter PCB layout

For the Receiver, the following layout was designed:

Figure 21. Receiver PCB layout