Communications Lab(EE351)

AMPLITUDE MODULATION
Priyesh Pandey||Prateek Agarwal||Ayush Singh||Ahtisham Ali Ansari
11640710 || 11640700 || 11640270 || 11640080

Introduction -

Baseband signals are incompatible for direct transmission. For such a signal, to travel
longer distances, its strength has to be increased by modulating with a high frequency
carrier wave, which doesn’t affect the parameters of the modulating signal.
The characteristics of the message signal, if changed, the message contained in it also
alters. Hence, it is a must to take care of the message signal. A high frequency signal
can travel up to a longer distance, without getting affected by external disturbances.
We take the help of such high frequency signal which is called as a carrier signal to
transmit our message signal. Such a process is simply called as Modulation.

Amplitude Modulation

A continuous-wave goes on continuously without any intervals and it is

thebasebandmessage signal, which contains the information. This wave has to be
modulated.
According to the standard definition, “The amplitude of the carrier signal varies in
accordance with the instantaneous amplitude of the modulating signal.” Which
means, the amplitude of the carrier signal containing no information varies as per the
amplitude of the signal containing information, at each instant. This can be well
explained by the following figures.
The first figure shows the modulating wave, which is the message signal. The next
one is the carrier wave, which is a high frequency signal and contains no information.
While, the last one is the resultant modulated wave.

Time-domain Representation of the Waves

Let the modulating signal be,

m(t)=Amcos(2πfmt)
and the carrier signal be,
c(t)=Accos(2πfct)
Where,
Am and Ac are the amplitude of the modulating signal and the carrier signal
respectively.
fm and fc are the frequency of the modulating signal and the carrier signal respectively.
Then, the equation of Amplitude Modulated wave will be
s(t)= [Ac+Amcos(2πfmt)]cos(2πfct)

GNU Radio-

Software defined radio (SDR) is a new method to implement many RF applications.

SDR enables the computer to handle signal processing processes using a software
environment like “GNU Radio” instead of using hardware components. Using SDR,
we can easily simulate our signal and can vary different parameters of the blocks
instead of changing the hardware components everytime.
GNU Radio is a free & open-source software development toolkit that provides
signal processing blocks to implement software radios. It can be used with readily-
available low-cost external RF hardware to create software-defined radios, or without
hardware in a simulation-like environment. We have used this software for the
purpose of simulation.

USRP-
Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) is a range of software-defined radios
designed and sold by Ettus Research and its parent company, National Instruments.
USRPs connect to a host computer through a high-speed link, and the host-based
software uses this link to control the USRP hardware and transmit/receive data. We
program the hardware using GNU radio in this experiment in order to implement
amplitude modulation.

Simulation

In this experiment we will be transmitting an AM radio signal and recieving it and

regenerating the original signal. We modulate an audio (WAV) file and apply AM to
it and transmit it virtuaaly using Virtual Sink Block . From the Virtual source the
modulated signal will be recieved and synchronistically demodulated and the audio
file can be played bt computer’s speakers. We have used GNU radio as follows by
using virtually the functions of transmitter and reciever in the computer itself. For
this case we have zero noise as the channel is just virtual.
The block graph is as follows:
The working of the blocks is defined as follows-
WAV File Source: This block provides a wav file as an input from the corresponding
destination in the computer.

Rational Resampler: This block is a combined Interpolator and Decimator. It is used

to convert from one sample rate to another as long as they can be related by a ratio:
�sout = Fsin∗ interpolation/Decimation

Throttle: This block limits the data throughput to the specified sampling rate.
Signal Source: This block is used to provide a particular signal with some defined
frequency and sample rate as input. Here we give a cosine pulse with frequency 150K
as the input (carrier signal).
Low Pass Filter: This block, as it’s name suggests, acts as a low pass filter.
Audio Sink: This block acts as the output.

Working
Firstly, the WAV file is added with initial sampling rate of 44.1kHz.The wave file is
passed through a resampler (Interpolation = 20, Decimation = 3) to produce a new
signal with 320 kHz sampling rate because our carrier is sampled at 320 kHz.
The audio signal is then amplitude modulated. The recieved signal is multiplied by
the same cosine signal (synchronous demodulation). This acts as a frequency shift in
order to center carrier signal at 0 Hz. Finally, the demodulated signal is passed
through a Low Pass Filter (LPF) to get the original signal back.

Using USRP
Finally we replace the simulation with actual hardware i.e. USRP. The USRP board is
connected to the computer through USB. In this case, the output received is noisy
due to the channel becoming actually physical.
The only change from the
previous simulation is the use
UHD USRP SINK instead of
the virtual sink block and
USRP SOURCE to virtual
source block. The
transmission is in RF range
with 2.4GHz as center
frequency by hardware.
Result

The first graph shows the actual .wav file, while the modulated signal is the second
graph represents the modulated signal in frrequency domain. The final graph shows
the original signal recovered from the recieved signal.
We cant generate exactly the same signal due to following problems-
1. Noise: When transmitting using USRP we face noise from the chnnel which is
white gaussian noise.
2. Attenuation: We observed significant loss in power of transmitted signal.