MODULATION

Modulation is the process of varying one waveform in relation to another waveform. In

telecommunications, modulation is used to convey a message, or a musician may modulate the
tone from a musical instrument by varying its volume, timing and pitch. Often a high-frequency
sinusoid waveform is used as carrier signal to convey a lower frequency signal.

The process of converting digital data into an analog signal is known as modulation.
Conversely, the process of converting a modulated analog signal back into a digital format is
known as demodulation.

In

modulation a digital signal is modulated over an analog signal for transmission.

There are three physical characteristics of a wave that can be altered or modulated. The three
key parameters of a sine wave are its amplitude ("volume"), its phase ("timing") and its
frequency ("pitch"), all of which can be modified in accordance with a low frequency
information signal to obtain the modulated signal.

 Simple idea - use varying voltages to represent 1s and 0s

 One common encoding use negative voltage for 1 and positive voltage for 0

During the process of modulation, there are THREE types of signals. These are:

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a) Carrier Signals (wave)
b) Modulating signal
c) Modulated signal

a) Carrier Signals (wave)

This acts as envelop to the digital information being transmitted through the analog link.
It does not alter the characteristics of the digital information sent in any way.
At the receiver end, this carrier is discarded after the wanted signal has been extracted.

b) Modulating signal
This is the wanted digital signal from the computer

c) Modulated signal
This is the output of the modulation process. It is the product of combining the carrier and the
modulating signal.

NB: The carrier wave has constant amplitude and constant frequency. It has three main
characteristics in itself. Its amplitude, frequency and phase.

Three basic types of modulation are possible (see Figure 2.12 for a visual comparison):

1. Amplitude Modulation (AM). In AM, the carrier signal’s amplitude is changed according to
the modulating digital signal’s bit value. For example, two amplitude sizes (a small and a
large one) may be used to, respectively, represent bit values 0 and 1. AM’s main weakness is
its susceptibility to distortion.

2. Frequency Modulation (FM). In FM, the carrier signal’s frequency is changed according to
the modulating digital signal’s bit value. For example, two frequency values (a low and a
high one) may be used to, respectively, represent bit values 0 and 1. FM is more resistant to
distortion than AM.

3. Phase Modulation (PM). In PM, the carrier signal’s phase is changed according to the
modulating digital signal’s bit value. A change in the carrier signal’s phase indicates a
change in the modulating digital signal’s bit value from 0 to 1 or from 1 to 0.

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Figure 2.12 Three basic modulation methods.

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Signal Types
All signals are either analog or digital. An analog signal is one in which information appears as
a continuous variation of some property. Human speech is an example: it produces a continuous
variation of air pressure.
A digital signal, on the other hand, is one in which information appears as a sequence of binary
values 0 and 1.
In electrical terms, signals appear as variation of some electrical property (e.g., voltage). Figure
2.10 illustrates. In the analog signal example, the voltage freely varies between 0 and 5 Volts. In
the digital signal, the voltage may assume only two values: 0 Volts to represent digital value 0
and 5 Volts to represent digital value 1.

Figure 2.10 Analog and digital signals.

Since digital computers play a central role in data communication, in nearly all cases, digital
signals are used. Analog signals are used in cases of equipment which date back to before the
advent of digital technology. Existing analog telephone networks are a good example of the
latter.

Modulation
Transmission of digital data over an analog line is achieved using a technique called
modulation, where the digital bit stream is modulated over an analog carrier signal. A modem
(modulator and demodulator) is a commonly used device which employs this technique. As
illustrated in Figure 2.11.
A modem converts the outgoing digital bit stream from a device into an analog signal and
converts the incoming analog signal into a digital bit stream.

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Figure 2.11 Role of modems.

Digitization
Digitization is essentially the opposite of modulation. Whereas in modulation a digital signal is
modulated over an analog signal for transmission, in digitization an analog signal is converted
into digital format through a process of sampling. For example, the analog signal resulting from
human speech can be sampled and converted into digital data, transmitted over digital lines, and
converted back to analog signal at the other end. These two functions are performed by a device
called codec (coder/decoder). Figure 2.13 illustrates the concept.

Figure 2.13 Role of codecs.

It is worth noting that, unlike modulation (which is an exact process since the digital signal at the
source and the digital signal received at the destination are identical), digitization is only an
approximate process because of sampling. Figure 2.14 illustrates how an analog signal is
sampled. Here the time interval for each sample is one millisecond. Each sample (denoted by a
small black box) is a real value which is in turn represented by an integer in the range 0-255 so
that it can be represented in one byte of data. This process (of representing a continuous value
with a discrete value) is called quantization. The relatively small loss of information inherent in
the process is called quantization error.

The coding process generates the sample data from the analog signal. The decoding process
regenerates an approximation of the original signal by fitting a smooth curve to the sampled
points. The quality of the regenerated signal can be improved by increasing the sampling rate
(i.e., reducing the sampling interval), but up to a limit dictated by the Nyquist’s theorem. This
limit is exercised by a popular digitization technique called Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)

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which uses a sampling rate twice that of the original signal frequency. For example, a 4 kHz
speech signal is sampled at a rate of 8000 samples per second.
The main advantage of digitization is that, due to its resistance to distortion, it is much easier to
reliably transmit a digital signal over a long distance than an analog signal.

Figure 2.14 sampling an analog signal.