18.

330 Lecture Notes:

Modulation: Wireless Communication and
Lock-in Amplifiers
Homer Reid
April 9, 2013

Contents
1 Overview 2

2 Analog modulation 3
2.1 Amplitude modulation (AM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2 Phase and frequency modulation (PM and FM) . . . . . . . . . . 7

3 Digital modulation 9
3.1 OOK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.2 BPSK, QPSK, MPSK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.3 QAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.4 Spectral efficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

4 Multiplex methods 13
4.1 The cocktail party . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.2 How CDMA works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

5 Lock-in amplifiers 15
5.1 How lock-in amplifiers work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

1
18.330 Lecture Notes 2

1 Overview
Consider a bandlimited baseband signal f BB (t) with bandwidth .1 A good
example to have in mind is music: think of f BB (t) as the time-dependent voltage
V (t) output from your MP3 player to your headphones or speakers. In this case,
f BB (t) is a bandlimited baseband signal with a bandwidth 2 20 kHz.
(The superscript BB stands for baseband.)
For various reasons, it may be desirable to convert the signal f BB (t) into
a new signal f M (t) whose frequency spectrum has the same bandwidth as the
original signal f BB (t), but is centered around a nonzero frequency called the
carrier frequency, carrier . The process of translating frequencies in this way is
called modulation. (The M superscript stands for modulated. In some cases
we will also refer to f M as f transmitted to indicate that it is the signal that is
eventually transmitted over a wired or wireless communication channel.)
Modulation is ubiquitous throughout all fields of science and engineering
and forms the essential cornerstone of modern communications technologies. It
also furnishes an example of a highly practical and relevant real-world problem
which would be essentially impossible to tackle without the ideas and techniques
of Fourier analysis.
The purpose of these short notes is to introduce some of the basic techniques
of modulation and compare their spectral efficiencies. We will focus primarily
on communication technologies, but we will also briefly discuss lock-in detection
as an important application of modulation techniques in experimental science.

1 A bandlimited signal with bandwidth is a function f (t) whose Fourier transform fe()

is zero for frequencies outside an interval of width . A baseband signal is a signal whose
frequency spectrum is centered at = 0.
18.330 Lecture Notes 3

2 Analog modulation
2.1 Amplitude modulation (AM)
The simplest way to modulate a signal is just to translate the entire frequency
spectrum of f (t) so that it is centered around the carrier frequency. This process
is called amplitude modulation (AM). Historically, AM was the first modulation
scheme used for wireless communications in the early 20th century, and it re-
mains in use to this day in AM radio. It was used in the first widely available
cellular telephone system, the AMPS system, in the 1980s. It was also used
for terrestrial television transmission until 2009. However, in the mid-20th cen-
tury it was superseded by FM, and in the late 20th century analog modulation
was essentially replaced altogether (for communications applications, anyway)
by digital modulation. On the other hand, amplitude modulation remains in
widespread use for the purposes of lock-in detection, discussed later.

Implementation of AM transmitters
The simplest way to do AM is just to multiply the carrier signal f carrier = cos c t
by the baseband signal f BB (t):

f AM (t) = f BB (t) cos c t (1)

In other words, the modulated signal is just a sinusoid at the carrier frequency,
but with a time-varying amplitude defined by f BB (t). The baseband signal
modulates the amplitude of the carrier; this is the origin of the name amplitude
modulation.

Spectrum of AM signals
Its easy to determine the frequency spectrum of an AM signal. As a first step,
suppose the baseband signal consists of just a single tone with frequency BB
and amplitude A:
f BB (t) = A cos BB t. (2)
The modulated signal is

f AM (t) = A cos BB (t) cos c t

To compute the frequency spectrum of this signal, we could now apply Fourier
analysis techniques, but as it turns out we dont need to, because we can just
appeal to the trigonometric identity
1h i
cos a cos b = cos(a + b) + cos(a b) (3)
2
to write
Ah i
f AM (t) = cos c + BB )t + cos c BB )t . (4)
2
18.330 Lecture Notes 4

This is a frequency spectrum with nonvanishing contributions from just two

frequencies, namely, c BB .
Of course, usually our baseband signal will be more interesting than just the
single tone (2). However, any baseband signal can be decomposed into a sum
of single tones through the magic of Fourier analysis. For the time being, lets
suppose f BB is a periodic baseband signal that is an even function of time; then
its Fourier decomposition looks something like
X
f BB (t) = fg
BB
(n ) cos n t.
n

Each term in this sum contributes two terms to the frequency spectrum of the
output signal just as in equation (4):
X f BB (n ) h

i
f AM (t) = cos c + n t + cos c n t . (5)
n
2

Equation (5) describes a frequency spectrum consisting of two copies of the

frequency spectrum of f BB (t), with the two copies mirrored about the carrier
frequency. In particular, the bandwidth of the transmit signal is twice the
bndwidth of the baseband signal. Each mirrored copy is called a sideband, and
this type of amplitude modulation is known as double-sideband modulation.
Figures 1 and 2 show the baseband, carrier, and modulated signals in the
time and frequency domains.
18.330 Lecture Notes 5

1.5 1.5

1 1

0.5 0.5
y

0 0

-0.5 -0.5
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
t

1.5 1.5

1 1

0.5 0.5

0 0
y

-0.5 -0.5

-1 -1

-1.5 -1.5
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
t

1.5 1.5

1 1

0.5 0.5

0 0
y

-0.5 -0.5

-1 -1

-1.5 -1.5
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
t

Figure 1: Amplitude modulation in the time domain.

18.330 Lecture Notes 6

1
t
y

1
t
y

1
t

Figure 2: Amplitude modulation in the frequency domain. The baseband signal

has some frequency spectrum that is nonzero up to a maximum frequency max .
The carrier signal has a frequency spectrum that is concentrated at a single
point. The modulated signal has a frequency spectrum consisting of two copies
(two sidebands) of the baseband frequency spectrum mirrored about the car-
rier frequency. The modulated signal has bandwidth 2 max . Single-sideband
modulation would produce a similar signal but with only one of the two side-
bands present.
18.330 Lecture Notes 7

Single-sideband AM
As we noted above, the frequency spectrum of a nave AM signal contains two
redundant copies of the information we are trying to transmit. This means that
the transmit signal actually has twice as much bandwidth as it nominally needs
to have to transmit the requisite information.
It is possible to circumvent this redundancy by use of a technique known as
single-sideband modulation. This is based on the following modified version of
the trig identity (3):

cos a cos b sin a sin b = cos(a + b).

To see how single-sideband modulation works in practice, suppose again that

our baseband signal consist of the single tone

f BB (t) = A cos BB t.

What we do is to form the /2-shifted-version of this signal:

BB
f/2 (t) = A sin BB t.

Then we multiply f BB (t) by the original carrier signal cos c t, and we multi-
ply the /2 shifted baseband signal by the /2 shifted carrier signal, and we
subtract:
f SSAM (t) = f BB (t) cos c t f/2
BB
sin c t
For the case of the single-tone baseband signal, the transmit signal now contains
only the single tone c + BB ; the lower-sideband tone at c BB has been
supressed. More generally, if f BB (t) contains a spectrum of frequencies, the
transmitted signal will contain only one copy of this spectrum, not the two
redundant copies we found above.
However, for baseband signals that are more complicated than a single tone,
forming the /2 shifted version is expensive: we have to Fourier-decompose
the signal into constituent sinusoids and then apply a /2 phase shift to each
sinusoid. In practice this requires fairly sophisticated digital signal processing
techniques, and is not commonly used for wireless AM communications.

2.2 Phase and frequency modulation (PM and FM)

One drawback of amplitude modulation is that all the information is in the
amplitude of the received signal, which makes that signal susceptible to noise
contamination. This will be evident to anyone who has ever experienced annoy-
ing hissing and ringing sounds from an AM radio.
An alternative technique is modulate the phase and/or frequency of the
carrier instead of its amplitude. The former option is called phase modulation
(PM), The latter option is called frequency modulation (FM), and collectively
they are sometimes known as angle modulation. In the time domain, the signals
18.330 Lecture Notes 8

take the form

h i
f PM = cos c t + f BB (t)
h Z t i
f FM = cos c t + f BB (t0 ) dt
0

where is a parameter known as the modulation index that determines the

fractional extent to which we allow the carrier phase and frequency to be tweaked
by the baseband signal.

1.5 1.5

1 1

0.5 0.5

0 0
y

-0.5 -0.5

-1 -1

-1.5 -1.5
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
t

Figure 3: An example of a FM signal in the time domain. Note that the

amplitude is fixed, but the instantaneous frequency varies.

Angle modulation techniques have the advantage that all the information is
contained in the zero crossings of the signal, which make them less sensitive to
noise contamination. However, this advantage comes at a cost: for the same
baseband signal, PM and FM signals occupy significantly more bandwidth than
AM signals. A real-world demonstration of this fact may be found in the spacing
of AM and FM radio stations: AM stations are typically spaced about 10 kHz
apart from one another, while FM stations are typically spaced around 500 kHz
from each other, even though they are nominally transmitting baseband signals
of the same bandwidth (music and talk, which occupies up to around 20 kHz).
18.330 Lecture Notes 9

3 Digital modulation
AM and FM are techniques for transmitting analog signals. We may also want
to transmit a digital signal that is, a sequence of 0s and 1s. There are many
ways to do this, of which we will consider just a few.

3.1 OOK
The simplest form of digital modulation is known as on-off keying (OOK).
In this scheme, the carrier is turned on for the duration of each 1 bit in the
bitstream, and turned off for the duration of each 0 bit.

0 1 2 3 4 5
t

Figure 4: OOK transmit signal.

3.2 BPSK, QPSK, MPSK

The next most complicated thing we could do would be to tweak the phase or
frequency of the carrier during each bit period with the tweak depending on the
binary data to be transmitted during that period.
For example, we might give the carrier a 0-degree phase shift during bit
periods in which the transmit bit is 1, and a -phase shift during bit periods
in which the transmit bit is 0. This is binary phase-shift keying (BPSK). Of
course, a -phase shift to a sinusoid amounts to a sign flip, so BPSK is similar
18.330 Lecture Notes 10

to OOK except that instead of turning the carrier off during 0 bits we flip its
sign.

0 1 2 3 4 5
t

Figure 5: BPSK transmit signal.

The next most complicated possibility is quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK).

In this scheme, we look at two bits at a time to determine the phase of the car-
rier, and apply a phase shift of 0, /2, , or 3/2 accordingly. Continuing in this
vein, we arrive at general MPSK schemes in which we apply one of M possible
phase shifts to the carrier signal depending on log2 M bits from the bitstream.
In addition to PSK schemes, there are also frequency shift keying FSK
schemes, which simply tweak the frequency instead of the phase of the carrier
signal.

3.3 QAM
3.4 Spectral efficiency
An important consideration in identifying a digital modulation scheme is the
spectral efficiency. This is the data bitrate of a signal divided by the bandwidth
occupied by the transmitted signal. More efficient modulation schemes are
able to transmit data at a higher rate while occupying the same portion of the
frequency spectrum.
18.330 Lecture Notes 11

As an example, lets compute the spectral efficiency of QPSK. We will assume

a bitrate of 2 megabit/s and a carrier frequency of = 2100 MHz. Suppose,
for the sake of simplicity, that the data to be transmitted consist of a bitstream
that repeats over and over again the following 8 bits:

...00011011...

In a QPSK scheme with a bitrate of 2megabit /s, we transmit 2 bits in each

1 s interval, so the period of our 8-bit sequence is 4 s. If we imagine the
bitstream to repeat this 8-bit sequence over and over again, then the baseband
signal is periodic with period T = 4 s. Since the carrier frequency is a multiple
2
of 4s , the entire transmit signal is periodic with period T = 4 s and we can
characterize its frequency spectrum by computing its Fourier series coefficients,
2
which will be defined for frequencies that are integer multiples of 0 = 4s . The
4
carrier frequency is one such frequency: c = N 0 , where N = 4 10 .
In a QPSK scheme, the above 8-bit pattern would lead to a transmit signal
of the form

cos c t, 0 < t < 1s

sin t,
c 1 < t < 2s
f QPSK (t) =


cos c t, 2 < t < 3s
sin c t, 3 < t < 4 s

The Fourier series coefficients are

1 T QPSK
Z
f^
QPSK
n = f (t)ein0 t dt
T 0
 Z T /4
1
= cos(c t)ein0 t dt
T 0
Z T /2
+ sin(c t)ein0 t dt
T /4
Z 3T /2
cos(c t)ein0 t dt
T /2
Z T 
in0 t
cos(c t)e dt
3T /2

This spectrum is plotted in Figure 6. If we define the bandwidth of the signal

to be the width of the frequency range within which the Fourier coefficients are
within a factor of 10 of their peak amplitude, then the signal has a bandwidth of
roughly 100 = 2.5 MHz, and the bit rate is 2 megabit/s, so we have a spectral
2
efficiency of 2.5 0.8 bit/s/Hz.
18.330 Lecture Notes 12

10

1
|f_n|

0.1

0.01

0.001
39800 39850 39900 39950 40000 40050 40100 40150 40200
n

Figure 6: Fourier spectrum of QPSK signal. The x axis labels n, the index of
the frequency n0 ; the carrier frequency is at c = 4 104 0 .
18.330 Lecture Notes 13

4 Multiplex methods
When multiple people are trying to communicate over the same communications
channel which may be wired (think of an ethernet network consisting of a
single long cable with multiple computers feeding signals in and out) or wireless
(think of electromagnetic waves propagating through the air) we need multiplex
techniques to allow the channel to be shared.
There are three broad categories of multiplex techniques.
Time-division multiplex access (TDMA), in which multiplexing happens
in the time domain: one user uses the entire channel (i.e. all available
frequencies) to transmit his message, then a second user uses the entire
channel to transmit her message, and so on.
Frequency-division multiplex access (FDMA), in which multiplexing hap-
pens in the frequency domain: multiple users transmit their messages
simultaneously, but each users transmission is restricted to a finite chunk
of the available frequency spectrum.
Code-division multiplex access (CDMA), in which all users transmit their
messages at the same time using the same frequencies, and yet the receiver
is magically able to disentangle one message from another because the
messages are are coded in an orthogonal way.
To summarize:
TDMA: same frequencies, different times.
FDMA: same time, different frequencies.
CDMA: same time, same frequencies, different codes.

TDMA is used, for example, in ethernet networking. In this protocol, mul-

tiple computers are connected to a common wire, and a message sent by one
computer is seen by all computers. Only one computer may be transmitting at
a time.2 TDMA was also used in early cell phone systems. It is very easy to
design TDMA receivers: basically, the receiver just has to turn on during the
appropriate time interval and then turn off during other time
FDMA is the most widely used multiplex method. It is used, for example,
in radio broadcasting (each AM and FM channel broadcasts simultaneously at
a different frequency) and in cell-phone networks (different phones communi-
cate with the base station on different frequencies. FDMA receivers are slightly
2 But how is this synchronization enforced? What happens if two computers try to transmit

messages at the same time? How do computers know its their turn to talk? Answer: they
dont! When a computer has a message to send, it just randomly sends it out and hopes
nobody else was trying to send a message at the same time. If someone else was trying to
send a message at the same time, the two messages collide, neither message is received by
anyone, and the two transmitting computers each wait a randomly chosen amount of time
before attempting to resend. This simpleminded protocol actually yields excellent performance
as long as the total message density (the fraction of all time during which some computer is
trying to send a message) doesnt get too high.
18.330 Lecture Notes 14

trickier to design than TDMA receivers, but still relatively straightforward. Ba-
sically, the receiver applies a filter to exclude incoming signals at all frequencies
other than the frequency of interest, then downconverts (demodulates) from the
carrier frequency to baseband.
CDMA is a relatively recent addition to the fold of multiplex techniques. In
CDMA, each message is coded using a certain simple code in a way that allows
it to be distinguished from other simultaeously-received messages. CDMA re-
ceivers are much more difficult to design than TDMA or FDMA receivers, and
their implementation involves a lot of interesting mathematics.

4.1 The cocktail party

A good way to understand the various different multiplex techniques is to think
of a cocktail party in which multiple pairs of people are all trying to talk to each
other in the same small crowded space. Consider two pairs of conversationalists:
Akiko is trying to say something to Bob, while Chen is trying to say something
to Dinara. How can Bob receive the message from Akiko without confusing it
with the message from Chen? The relevant implementations of the protocols
discussed above would look something like this:

1. TDMA: Akiko gets to talk to Bob for 1 minute while Chen and Dinara
wait silently. Then Akiko and Bob have to shut up for 1 minute while
Chen and Dinara converse, etc. The message reception protocol is easy:
Bob just knows to listen when its his partners turn to be talking.
2. FDMA: Akiko sings to Bob in a soprano voice, while at the same time Chen
sings to Dinara in a bass voice. Again the message reception protocol is
easy: Bob just tries to tune out the lower-pitched sounds he is hearing
and focuses on the higher-pitched song.
3. CDMA: Akiko talks to Bob in Japanese, while Chen talks to Dinara in
Chinese. Now the message reception protocol is more subtle: Bob is
receiving information at the same time and at the same pitch, so his brain
must piece together only the sounds that make sense in Japanese while
filtering out the sounds that are only meaningful in Chinese.

4.2 How CDMA works

18.330 Lecture Notes 15

5 Lock-in amplifiers
Most of the preceding discussion pertained to communications technology, which
is the primary application of modulation theory in engineering. The lock-in
amplifier is an application of modulation techniques to an entirely different
field of endeavor: experimental science and measurement.
The basic idea of lock-in amplifiers is this: Suppose we are trying to mea-
sure a DC signal. (DC stands for direct current, as opposed to alternating
current (AC), and just means the signal is constant in time.) For example, in
a solid-state physics experiment, we may be trying to measure the resistance of
a piece of material, which is certainly a time-independent quantity, and we may
do this by connecting the material to a fixed time-independent voltage source
(such as an AAA battery) and using a current meter to measure the DC current
that flows through the sample.
The difficulty with this kind of setup is that our measurement apparatus
(the current meter in this case) will typically be contaminated by noise, an un-
avoidable presence in all real-world equipment despite the best efforts of device
manufacturers to mitigate its impact. This noise spectrum will typically be
peaked at DC [(DC-peaked noise in measurement equipment is often known as
1/f noise (one-over-f noise]), which makes DC about the worst frequency at
which we could possibly try to measure our signal.
But if the signal we are trying to measure really is a DC signal, then were
out of luck, right? We must measure at DC, right? Wrong! We can modulate
our signal at some nonzero frequency, then detect at that frequency. In the
case of the resistance measurement described above, we would simply drive the
sample with an AC voltage at some frequency (typically tens to hundreds of Hz)
instead of a DC signal. Now we have a time-dependent current signal, which
we measure and then filter to extract just the Fourier component we want
namely, the component corresponding to the frequency at which we modulated
the signal, with all other frequencies present in the measured signal understood
to be spurious noise contributions. This technique allows experimentalists to
achieve sensitivity levels far below what would be achievable with the bare noise
floors available on real-world measurement equipment.

5.1 How lock-in amplifiers work