EE 324 Communication Systems

EE 384 Communication Engineering

Lecture 10
Dr. Himal A. Suraweera

An alternative way to calculate the bandwidth need of an

FM signal is to include the maximum number of side
frequencies whose amplitudes are greater than some
selected value.

Therefore, we may define the transmission bandwidth of

an FM signal as the separation between two frequencies
beyond which none of the side frequencies is greater
than 1% of the carrier amplitude when modulation is
removed.
We define the transmission bandwidth as:

Where is the modulation frequency and

is the
largest value of integer that satisfies the requirement

The value of

varies with

as shown in Table 1 below:

Table 1: Number of significant side frequencies of a

wideband FM signal for different modulation index,
(Adopted from [1])

The transmission bandwidth calculated using this

procedure can be presented in the form of an universal
curve given below (Figure 1):

Observation from Figure 1:

We see that as is increased, bandwidth occupied by the
significant side frequencies drop towards that over which
the carrier frequency actually deviates.

Figure 1: Universal curve for evaluating the 1%

bandwidth of a FM signal (adopted from [1])

What happens when we have an arbitrary message

signal (not necessarily a single tone)?
Assume the highest frequency component of this signal is
W
We first define deviation ratio (D) defined as the ratio of
the frequency deviation
to the highest modulation
frequency W

Now replace with W and use the Carsons rule.

 From a practical point of view, bandwidth estimated

by the Carsons rule somewhat under estimates the
bandwidth requirement of a FM signal
Carsons rule approaches correct values for both very
large and very small
Carsons rule always give less bandwidth than the
universal curve (maximum bandwidth error near
Carsons rule is widely used in practice since it is a
very convenient approximation with a good accuracy.

Problem
A10 MHz carrier is frequency modulated by a sine signal
such that the peak frequency deviation is 50 kHz.
Determine the approximate bandwidth of the FM signal if
the modulating sinusoid is (a) 500 kHz (b) 500 Hz (c) 10
KHz

Solution
(a)
This is a narrowband FM signal and the bandwidth
=
= 1 MHz
(b)
; this is a wideband FM case; and
kHz
Carsons rule gives 101 kHz
(c)
and carsons rule gives
= 120 kHz.
A more accurate method is to find n the number of
significant bands (use Table 1):
= 160 kHz
Generation of PM and FM signals
Since the amplitude of PM/FM signals is
constant, the designer need not worry about
excessive power
PM/FM signals are immune to nonlinear
distortion. This allows the use of nonlinear
electronic devices in the generation.
AM can not be used at microwave frequencies
(frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz) as
the required wideband linear amplifiers are not
available at these frequencies. Therefore,

microwave repeater links for long-distance

telephone communication use FM.

Generation of FM
In FM generation, we need to estabilish methods for
linear change of the instanteneous frequency with the
message signal

1. Direct FM
2. Indirect FM
Direct FM

Figure 2: Direct Method of FM Generation

Direct FM is straightforward and it only needs a
voltage control oscillator (VCO)

 VCO is an electronic device whose oscillation

frequency is a linear function of the applied voltage.
The oscillation frequency,

of a parallel tuned LC circuit

(inductance L and capacitance C) is given by

The VCO has a voltage controlled capacitance

called a varacter to obtain voltage dependance
oscillation frequency
where C is a constant.
Then

Now provided that

we can have

The above expression is equivalent to

where frequency sensitivity is

A junction diode is a varactor and they are designed

such that the value of the junction capacitance is
significant (0.1 to 2000 pF).
When used as voltage-variable capacitors are varactor
diodes are reverse biased. Further, the capacitance of
the junction varies inversely with the applied reverse
voltage.
A drawback of Direct FM is frequency instability
(carrier frequency is not obtained from a highly stable
oscillator).
As a result, it is necessary to have additional circuitry
to achieve frequency stability.
VCOs are available as Integrated Circuits (ICs) and
they are fairly stable and accurate. But the output
power is low.

Example:
R-2206 of the EXAR Corporation, USA has an
operating frequency range of 0.01 Hz to 1 MHz.
LM 556 has an operational frequency range of 1 MHz

Indirect FM Generation (Armstrong Method)

In order to generate wideband FM, a method of
increasing the modulation index must be used.
In this method, first a narrowband FM signal is
generated. Next, it is converted to wideband FM
using frequency multiplication

Figure 3: Block diagram of Indirect FM generation

method (adopted from [1])

In Figure 3 above, the first part generates a narrowband

FM signal which we have already discussed.
A frequency multiplier is a nonlinear device followed by a
bandpass filter designed to multiply frequencies of the
input signal by a given factor.
The input-output characteristics of such a device may be
expressed in the following general form:

where
are coefficients determined by the
operating point of the device and n is the highest order of
nonlinearity.
Example: Simply consider a square law device with
output
. Assume that
is a FM signal
with
Now

Use

To get

We see that
output is a FM signal with carrier frequency
Frequency deviation twice that of the original
input FM signal

Similarly input-output relation of the type

will give rise to FM output
components at frequencies
with the
corresponding frequency deviations
Use of frequency multiplication increases the carrier of
the FM signal. This may result in very high carrier
frequencies in order to achieve a given modulation index.
To avoid such a difficulty, frequency conversation is
used. (it is essentially same as the one discussed in AM
and translates the spectrum of a signal by a given
amount but does not change its spectral content.

Frequency Multiplier All spectral components of the

input signal are multiplied by themselves (all cross
products are present)
Frequency Converter All spectral components of the
input signal are multiplied by a sinusoid with fixed
frequency.

References
[1] Simon Haykin, Communication Systems, 4th Edition
[2] A. Bruce Carlson, Communication Systems, 4th Edition