AM RECEVIER

Function of the Receiver

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 At the receiver, signals from various transmitter at different frequencies

are present. In addition noise is also present. The receiver to receive the
wanted signal from this crowd of the signals.
 Therefore the functions that a receiver must perform in order to receive
wanted signal are as follows
 Select the desired signal from all other unwanted signal
 Amplify the desired signal
 Demodulate the amplified signal
 After demodulation the original signal modulating signal is obtained
 Apply Amplified signal demodulated signal to the loudspeaker.
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 Simplified Block Diagram of an AM Receiver
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 Simplified Block Diagram of an AM Receiver
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 Receiver front end = RF section

 Detecting the signal
 Band-limiting the signal
 Amplifying the Band-limited signal
 Mixer/converter
 Down converts the RF signal to an IF signal
 Intermediate frequency (IF) signal
 Amplification
 Selectivity
 Ability of a receiver to accept assigned frequency
 Ability of a receiver to reject other frequencies
 AM detector demodulates the IF signal to the original signal
 Audio section amplifies the recovered signal.
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 Performance Parameter of Receiver
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 Selectivity
 Sensitivity
 Fidelity
 Image frequency Rejection

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 Selectivity
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 It is the ability of the receiver to select a signal of a desired

frequency while rejecting all others.
 The selectivity of the receiver is obtained partially by RF amplifier
and mainly by IF amplifiers.
 The selectivity depends upon tuned LC circuits used for RF and IF
stages. fr is the resonating (tuned) frequency and Q is quality factor of
these LC circuits.
Bandwidth = fr /Q
Bandwidth = f2 – f1

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 Sensitivity
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 The ability of the receiver to pick up weak signals and amplify

them, is called sensitivity
 It is often defined in terms of the voltage that must be applied to the
receiver input terminals to give standard output power, measured at
the output terminals.
 As the gain of the receiver is increased, sensitivity is also increased.

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 Fidelity
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 The ability of the receiver to reproduce all the range of modulating

frequency equally is called fidelity.
 A good fidelity requires wide band of frequencies to be amplified.
 Hence for good fidelity, more bandwidth of RF and IF stages is
required.
 But this results is poor selectivity AM receivers are not good
fidelity receivers, since bandwidth in AM is low.

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 Image Frequency Rejection
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 We know that local oscillator frequency is made higher than the

signal frequency such that f0 – fs=fi. Here fi is IF. That is f0=fs+fi.
 The IF stage passes only fi, if the frequency fsi=fs+2fi appears at the
input of the mixer, then the mixer will produce difference frequency
equal to fi.
 The frequency fsi is called image frequency and is defined as the
signal frequency plus twice the IF.
 This image frequency rejection is done by tuned circuits in RF stage.

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 Image Frequency Rejection Ratio(IFRR)
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 The image frequency rejection ratio (IFRR) is a numerical measure

of the ability of preselector to reject the image frequency.

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 Types of AM Receiver
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 There are two basic types of radio receiver

 Coherent receiver or Coherent detector
 Non Coherent receiver or Non coherent detector

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 Types of AM Receiver
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 Coherent Receiver
 It’s a synchronous receiver
 The frequency generated in the receiver and used for demodulation are
synchronized to oscillator frequencies generated in the transmitter.
 Noncoherent Receiver
 It’s a asynchronous receiver
 No frequency generated in the receiver or the frequencies used for
demodulation are completely independent from the transmitters carrier
frequency
 Noncoherent detection often called envelope detector
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 Noncoherent Tuned Radio Frequency Receiver Block Diagram
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 Contd…
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 This TRF receiver includes an RF stage, a detector stage and an

audio stage
 There are two to three RF amplifiers are required to filter and
amplify the received signal to a level sufficient to drive the detector
stage.
 The detector stage converts RF signals directly to information.
 Audio stage amplifies the information signals to a usable level.

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 Advantage and Disadvantage
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 Advantage
 TRF Receiver are very simple to implement
 TRF Receiver have high sensitivity
 Disadvantage
 They are useful only to single channel low frequency application
 Their bandwidth varies with center frequency when tuned over wide
range of frequency.
 Due to large number of RF amplifiers, The receiver can be unstable
 The gain of TRF receiver is not uniform over a wide frequency range.

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 AM Superheterodyne Receiver Block Diagram
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 Superheterodyne Receiver
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 RF Section
 Mixer/Converter section
 IF Section
 Audio Detector Section
 Audio Amplifier Section

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 RF SECTION
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 It consist of preselector and an amplifier stage

 Preselector is a broad tuned bandpass filter with an adjustable center
frequency that is tuned to the desired carrier frequency
 It prevent a specific unwanted radio frequency
 Also reduce the noise bandwidth
 Several advantage of including RF amplifier in a receiver are as follows
 Greater Gain, thus better sensitivity
 Improved image frequency rejection
 Better signal to noise ratio
 Better Selectivity
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 Mixer/ Converter Section
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 In this section includes a radio frequency oscillator

 This mixer/converter are nonlinear device
 It converts the Radio frequency signal to Intermediate frequency
(Although the carrier and sidebands frequencies are translated from
RF to IF, the shape of the envelope remains same)
 Here carrier and upper and lower side frequency are changed but no
change in bandwidth
 The most common intermediate frequency used in AM broadcast
band receivers is 455kHz.
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 IF Section
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 It consist of a series of IF amplifier and bandpass filters and often

called the IF strip
 Most of the receiver gain and selectivity is achieved in the IF
section.
 IF Center frequency and bandwidth are constant for all stations and
are chosen so that their frequency is less than any of the RF signals
to be received.

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 Detector Section
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 The purpose of the detector section is to convert the IF signals back

to the original source information.
 It is also called as Audio detector
 The detector can be simple as single diode or as complex as a phase
locked loop or balanced modulator.

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 Audio Amplifier Section
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 The audio section comprises several cascaded audio amplifiers and

one or more speakers.
 The number of amplifiers used depends on the audio signal power
desired.

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 Frequency Parameter for AM Receiver
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 Two frequency bands: Medium Wave band

: Short wave band
 RF carrier Range (MW band): 535kHz to 1650kHz
(SW band):5 to 15 MHz
 IF : 455kHz
 IF bandwidth :10kHz

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 Advantage
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 The selectivity of this receiver is better since its IF amplifiers are

narrow band and they only operate only at IF.
 The design of IF amplifiers is relatively simple since they operate
only its IF.

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 Demodulation of AM Signals
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 Demodulation extracting the baseband message from the

carrier.
There are 2 main methods of AM Demodulation:
 Envelope or non-coherent detection or demodulation.
Synchronised or coherent demodulation.

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 Envelope/Diode AM Detector
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 When an AM signal is received, the receiver must perform a converse

process to get the original signal (Information Signal ) back this process is
known as detection or demodulation.
 The simplest process which is used widely in AM radios is the Envelop
Detector .
 Envelop Detector is an electronic circuit which is used to
recover( Demodulate) the original signal in AM systems, its constructed
from just one diode, one capacitor and one resistor .
 This is essentially just a halfwave rectifier which charges a capacitor to
a voltage = the peak voltage of the AM signal .
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 Envelope/Diode AM Detector (Contd…)
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 Envelope/Diode AM Detector (Contd…)
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If the modulation depth is > 1, the distortion below occurs

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 Envelope/Diode AM Detector (Contd…)
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 The output of the detector follows the envelop of the modulated signal.
 On the positive cycles of the input signal, the diode conducts and the
capacitor charges up to the peak voltage of the input signal.
 As the input falls below this peak value, the diode is cut off, because the
capacitor voltage is greater than the input signal voltage, thus causing the
diode to open.
 The capacitor now discharges through the resistor at slow rate. The
discharge process continues until the nest positive half-cycle.
 When the input signal becomes greater than the output across the capacitor,
the diode conducts again and the process is repeated.
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 Synchronous or Coherent Demodulation
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This is relatively more complex and more expensive. The Local Oscillator
(LO) must be synchronised or coherent, i.e. at the same frequency and in
phase with the carrier in the AM input signal.

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 Synchronous or Coherent Demodulation (Contd...)
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If the AM input contains carrier frequency, the LO or synchronous carrier may be derived
from the AM input.

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