Modulation Methods Classification
Introduction
In telecommunications, the modulation process converts data into an electronic signal in order to send this data to a remote terminal. During this process, a modulator varies the characteristics of a signal, such as amplitude, phase or frequencye, according to a different signal which contains the data to be transmitted. The signal which contains the data is called modulation signal, while the signal whose characteristics are modified to include information is called carrier signal. In the receiver side, a demodulator extracts the data from the received signal.
To carry out this process, which is used in both wired and wireless communications, there are several methods which may be divided into analog modulations or digital modulations. This classification depends on the kind of data which is used to modulate the carrier signal, i.e. the data to be transmitted (analog or digital information) define the kind of modulation to be used.
Then, both analog and digital modulations may be classified in function of the characteristics that is modified on the carrier signal (amplitude, frequency or phase).
Analog vs digital modulations
Basically, the difference between analog modulations and digital modulations is the nature of the data used to modulate…
