Lab 03: AM and FM Sinusoidal Signals

Pre-Lab and Warm-Up: You should read at least the Pre-Lab and Warm-up sections of this lab assignment
and go over all exercises in the Pre-Lab section before going to your assigned lab session.
Lab Report: It is only necessary to turn in a report with graphs and explanations. You are asked to
label the axes of your plots and include a title for every plot. In order to keep track of plots, include your
plot inlined within your report. If you are unsure about what is expected, ask the TA who will grade your
report.
1 Introduction
The objective of this lab is to introduce more complicated signals that are related to the basic sinusoid.
These signals, which implement frequency modulation (FM) and amplitude modulation (AM), are widely
used in communication systems such as radio and television, but they also can be used to create interesting
sounds that mimic musical instruments.
2 Pre-Lab
We have spent a lot of time learning about the properties of sinusoidal waveforms of the form:
x(t) = Acos(2f
0
t +) = e

Ae
j
e
j2f
0
t

(1)
In this lab, we will extend our treatment of sinusoidal waveforms to more complicated signals composed of
sums of sinusoidal signals, or sinusoids with changing frequency.
2.1 Amplitude Modulation
If we add several sinusoids, each with a different frequency (f
k
) we can express the result as:
x(t) =
N

k=1
A
k
cos(2f
k
t +
k
) = e

k=1
(A
k
e
j
k
) e
j2f
k
t

(2)
where A
k
e
j
k
is the complex amplitudeof the k
th
complex exponential term. The choice of f
k
will deter-
mine the nature of the signalfor amplitude modulation or beat signals we pick two or three frequencies
very close together. See Chapter 3 for a more detailed discussion of beat signals.
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2.2 Frequency Modulated Signals
We will also look at signals in which the frequency varies as a function of time. In the constant-frequency
sinusoid (1) the argument of the cosine is also the exponent of the complex exponential, so the angle of this
signal is the exponent (2f
0
t +). This angle function changes linearly versus time, and its time derivative
is 2f
0
which equals the constant frequency of the cosine in rad/sec.
A generalization is available if we adopt the following notation for the class of signals represented by a
cosine function with a time-varying angle:
x(t) = Acos((t)) = e{Ae
j(t)
} (3)
The time derivative of the angle from (3) gives a frequency in rad/sec

i
(t) =
d
dt
(t) (rad/sec)
but we prefer units of hertz, so we divide by 2 to dene the instantaneous frequency:
f
i
(t) =
1
2
d
dt
(t) (Hz) (4)
2.3 Chirp, or Linearly Swept Frequency
A chirp signal is a sinusoid whose frequency changes linearly from a starting value to an ending one. The
formula for such a signal can be dened by creating a complex exponential signal with quadratic angle by
dening (t) in (3) as
(t) = 2t
2
+ 2f
0
t +
The derivative of (t) yields an instantaneous frequency (4) that changes linearly versus time.
f
i
(t) = 2t +f
0
The slope of f
i
(t) is equal to 2 and its intercept is equal to f
0
. If the signal starts at time t = 0 secs., then
f
0
is also the starting frequency. The frequency variation produced by such a time-varying angle is called
frequency modulation. This kind of signal is an example of an frequency modulated (FM) signal. More
generally, we often consider them to be part of a larger class called angle modulation signals. Finally, since
the linear variation of the frequency can produce an audible sound similar to a siren or a chirp, the linear-FM
signals are also called chirps.
2.4 MATLAB Synthesis of Chirp Signals
The following MATLAB code will synthesize a chirp:
fsamp = 11025;
dt = 1/fsamp;
dur = 1.8;
tt = 0 : dt : dur;
psi = 2*pi*(100 + 200*tt + 500*tt.*tt);
xx = real( 7.7*exp(j*psi) );
soundsc( xx, fsamp );
(a) Determine the total duration of the synthesized signal in seconds, and also the length of the tt vector
(number of samples).
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(b) In MATLAB, signals can only be synthesized by evaluating the signals dening formula at discrete
instants of time. These are called samples of the signal. For the chirp we do the following:
x(t
n
) = Acos(2t
2
n
+ 2f
0
t
n
+)
where t
n
= nT
s
represents discrete time instants. In the MATLAB code above, what is the value for
t
n
? What are the values of A, , f
0
, and ?
(c) Determine the range of frequencies (in hertz) that will be synthesized by the MATLAB script above.
Make a sketch by hand of the instantaneous frequency versus time. What are the minimum and
maximum frequencies that will be heard?
(d) Listen to the signal to determine whether the signals frequency content is increasing or decreasing
(use soundsc()). Notice that soundsc() needs to know the sampling rate at which the signal
samples were created. For more information do help sound and help sound().
3 Warm-up
The Beat Control GUI is part of the SP First toolbox.
3.1 Beat Control GUI
To assist you in your experiments with beat notes and AM signals, the tool called beatcon has been
created. This user interface controller will exhibit the basic signal shapes for beat signals and play the
signals. A small control panel will appear on the screen with buttons and sliders that vary the different
parameters for the beat signals. It can also call a user-written function called beat.m. Experiment with the
beatconcontrol panel and use it to produce a beat signal with two frequency components at 850 Hz and
870 Hz. Demonstrate the plot and sound to your friends.
3.2 Function for a Chirp
Use the code provided in the warm-up as a starting point in order to write a MATLAB function that will
synthesize a chirp signal according to the following comments:
function [xx,tt] = mychirp( f1, f2, dur, fsamp )
%MYCHIRP generate a linear-FM chirp signal
%
% usage: xx = mychirp( f1, f2, dur, fsamp )
%
% f1 = starting frequency
% f2 = ending frequency
% dur = total time duration
% fsamp = sampling frequency (OPTIONAL: default is 11025)
%
% xx = (vector of) samples of the chirp signal
% tt = vector of time instants for t=0 to t=dur
%
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if( nargin < 4 ) %-- Allow optional input argument
fsamp = 11025;
end
As a test case, generate a chirp sound whose frequency starts at 2500 Hz and ends at 500 Hz; its duration
should be 1.5 sec. Listen to the chirp using the soundsc function. Include a listing of the mychirp.m
function that you wrote.
3.3 Advanced Topic: Spectrograms
It is often useful to think of signals in terms of their spectra. A signals spectrum is a representation of the
frequencies present in the signal. For a constant frequency sinusoid as in (1) the spectrum consists of two
components, one at 2f
0
, the other at 2f
0
. For more complicated signals, the spectrum may be very
interesting and, in the case of FM, the spectrum is considered to be time-varying. One way to represent the
time-varying spectrum of a signal is the spectrogram (see Chapter 3 in the text). A spectrogram is found
by estimating the frequency content in short sections of the signal. The magnitude of the spectrum over
individual sections is plotted as intensity or color on a two-dimensional plot versus frequency and time.
When unsure about a command, use help.
There are a few important things to know about spectrograms:
1. In MATLAB the function specgram will compute the spectrogram, as already explained in a recent
lecture. Type help specgram to learn more about this function and its arguments.
2. Spectrograms are numerically calculated and only provide an estimate of the time-varying frequency
content of a signal. There are theoretical limits on how well spectrograms can actually represent the
frequency content of a signal. A later lab will treat this problem when we use the spectrogram to
extract the frequencies of piano notes.
3. Acommon call to the function is specgram(xx,1024,fs). The second argument
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is the window
length which could be varied to get different looking spectrograms. The spectrogram is able to see
the separate spectrum lines with a longer window length, e.g., 1024 or 2048.
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4. If you are working at home, you might not have the specgram() function because it is part of the
Signal Processing Toolbox. In that case, use the function plotspec(xx,fs) which was loaded
when you installed the SP First toolbox.
Note: The argument list for plotspec() has a different order fromspecgram, because plotspec()
uses an optional third argument for the windowlength (default value is 256). In addition, plotspec()
does not use color for the spectrogram; instead, darker shades of gray indicate larger values with black
being the largest.
In order to see what the spectrogram produces, run the following code:
fs=8000; xx = cos(3000*pi*(0:1/fs:0.5)); specgram(xx,1024,fs); colorbar
or, if you are using plotspec(xx,fs):
fs=8000; xx = cos(3000*pi*(0:1/fs:0.5)); plotspec(xx,fs,1024); colorbar
Notice that the spectrogram image contains one horizontal line at the correct frequency of the sinusoid.
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If the second argument is made equal to the empty matrix then its default value of 256 is used.
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Usually the window length is chosen to be a power of two, because a special algorithm called the FFT is used in the computa-
tion. The fastest FFT programs are those where the signal length is a power of 2.
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4 Lab Exercise: Chirps and Beats
For the lab exercise and lab report, you will synthesize some AM and FM signals. In order to verify that
they have the correct frequency content, you will use the spectrogram. Your lab report should discuss the
connection between the time-domain denition of the signal and its frequency-domain content.
4.1 Beat Notes
In the section on beat notes in Chapter 3 of the text, we analyzed the situation in which we had two sinusoidal
signals of slightly different frequencies; i.e.,
x(t) = Acos(2(f
c
f

)t) +Bcos(2(f
c
+f

)t) (5)
In this part, we will compute samples of such a signal and listen to the result.
(a) Write an M-le called beat.m that implements (5) and has the following as its rst lines:
function [xx, tt] = beat(A, B, fc, delf, fsamp, dur)
%BEAT compute samples of the sum of two cosine waves
% usage:
% [xx, tt] = beat(A, B, fc, delf, fsamp, dur)
%
% A = amplitude of lower frequency cosine
% B = amplitude of higher frequency cosine
% fc = center frequency
% delf = frequency difference
% fsamp = sampling rate
% dur = total time duration in seconds
% xx = output vector of samples
%--Second Output:
% tt = time vector corresponding to xx
Include a copy of your M-le in your lab report. You might want to call the syn_sin() function
written in Lab 2 to do the calculation. The function should also generate its own time vector, because
that vector can be used to dene the horizontal axis when plotting.
(b) To assist you in your experiments with beat notes, a tool called beatcon has been created. This user
interface controller is able to call your function beat.m, if you check the box Use External beat()
in the lower left-hand corner of the GUI. Therefore, before you invoke beatcon you should be sure
your M-le is free of errors. Also, make sure that your beat.m function is on the MATLAB path.
Test the M-le written in part (a) via beatcon by using the values A=10, B=10, fc=1000,
delf=10, fsamp=11025, and dur=1 secs. Plot the rst 0.2 seconds of the resulting signal. De-
scribe the waveform and explain its properties. Hand in a copy of your plot with measurements of the
period of the envelope and period of the high frequency signal underneath the envelope.
(c) (Optional)
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Experiment with different values of the frequency difference f

. Listen to the sounds

(there is a button on beatcon that will do this for you automatically) and think about the relationship
between the sound and waveform.
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Optional means that you do not have to include this in your lab report.
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4.2 More on Spectrograms
Beat notes provide an interesting way to investigate the time-frequency characteristics of spectrograms.
Although some of the mathematical details are beyond the reach of this course, it is not difcult to appreciate
the following issue: There is a fundamental trade-off between knowing which frequencies are present in a
signal (or its spectrum) and knowing how those frequencies vary with time. As mentioned previously in
Section 3.3, a spectrogram estimates the frequency content over short sections of the signal. If we make
the section length very short we can track rapid changes in the frequency. However, shorter sections lack
the ability to do accurate frequency measurement because the amount of input data is limited. On the other
hand, long sections can give excellent frequency measurements, but fail to track frequency changes well.
For example, if a signal is the sum of two sinusoids whose frequencies are nearly the same, a long section
length is needed to resolve the two sinusoidal components. This trade-off between the section length (in
time) and frequency resolution is equivalent to Heisenburgs Uncertainty Principle in physics.
When A = B in (5), the beat signal can be expressed as
x(t) = Acos(2(f
c
f

)t) +Acos(2(f
c
+f

)t) = A[cos(2f

t)] cos(2f
c
t)
Therefore, a beat note signal may be viewed as two signals with different constant frequencies, or as a single
frequency signal whose amplitude varies with time. Both views will be useful in evaluating the effect of
window length when nding the spectrogram of a beat signal.
(a) Create and plot a beat signal with
(i) f

= 32 Hz
(ii) T
dur
= 0.26 sec
(iii) f
s
= 11025 Hz
(iv) f
c
= 2000 Hz
(b) Find the spectrogram using a window length of 2048 using the commands:
specgram(x,2048,fsamp); colormap(1-gray(256)).
Comment on what you see. Are the correct frequencies present in the spectrogram? If necessary, use
the zoom tool to examine the important region of the spectrogram.
(c) Find the spectrogram using a window length of 16 using the commands:
specgram(x,16,fsamp); colormap(1-gray(256)).
Comment on what you see, and compare to the previous spectrogram.
4.3 Spectrogram of a Chirp
Use the mychirp function (written during the Warm-up) to synthesize a chirp signal for your lab report.
Use the following parameters:
1. A total time duration of 3 secs. with a D/A conversion rate of f
s
= 11025 Hz.
2. The instantaneous frequency starts at 5,000 Hz and ends at 300 Hz.
Listen to the signal. What comments can you make regarding the sound of the chirp (e.g., is the frequency
movement linear)? Does it chirp down, or chirp up?
Create a spectrogram of this chirp signal, and use it to verify that you have the correct instantaneous fre-
quencies.
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4.4 A Chirp Puzzle
Synthesize a second chirp signal (for your lab report) with the following parameters:
1. A total time duration of 3 secs. with a sampling rate of f
s
= 11025 Hz.
2. The instantaneous frequency starts at 3,000 Hz and ends at 2, 000 Hz (negative frequency).
Listen to the signal. Does it chirp down, or chirp up, or both?
Create a spectrogram of this second chirp signal.
Use the theory of the spectrum (with its positive and negative frequency components) to help explain what
you hear and what you see in the spectrogram. In other words, the changing instantaneous frequency implies
that the frequency components in the spectrum are moving.
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