AM broadcasting, audio transmission simulated in Python

This article continues the series of articles about the AM modulation. AM technique has been simulated previously, but only for tone signals. The AM modulator and a simple demodulator have been analyzed in this article, while more demodulated have been studied here. Now, a more complex and more realistic data signal is used, audio signals. This article presents the Python code to simulate the AM modulation and demodulation of audio signals. AM broadcasting was the first technique used to transmit audio signals and it is still used nowadays. Finally, the simulation results are used to conclude the advantages and disadvantages of the AM modulation.

Photo by Alessandro Cerino on Unsplash

Python simulation

Two different simulations in Python have been carried out. Firstly, the modulation and demodulation of an audio signal is presented. This simulation shows how the demodulation process gets a recognizable signal. Then, simulations with noise added to the received signal is shown. Results show the susceptibility of the AM modulation to noise.

AM Modulation & Demodulation

First of all, we import the required libraries. We will use the NumPy, SciPy and Matplotlib:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from scipy.signal import…