AM radio began with the first, experimental broadcast on Christmas Eve of 1906 by Canadian experimenter Reginald Fessenden, and was used for small-scale voice and music broadcasts up until World War I. AM radio technology is simpler than Frequency Modulated (FM) radio, Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB), Satellite Radio or HD (digital) Radio. An AM receiver detects amplitude variations in the radio waves at a particular frequency. It then amplifies changes in the signal voltage to drive a loudspeaker or earphones.
The earliest crystal radio receivers used a crystal diode detector with no amplification. Medium-wave and short-wave radio signals act differently during daytime and nighttime. During the day, AM signals travel by groundwave, diffracting around the curve of the earth over a distance up to a few hundred miles (or kilometers) from the signal transmitter.
However, after sunset, changes in the ionosphere cause AM signals to travel by skywave, enabling AM radio stations to be heard much farther from their point of origin than is normal during the day. This phenomenon can be easily observed by scanning an AM radio dial at night. As a result, many broadcast stations are required as a condition of license to reduce their broadcasting power significantly (or use directional antennas) after sunset, or even to suspend broadcasting entirely during nighttime hours.
Because of its susceptibility to atmospheric and electrical interference, AM broadcasting now attracts mainly talk radio and news programming, while music radio and public radio mostly shifted to FM broadcasting in the late 1970s. However, in the late 1960s and 1970s, top 40 rock and roll stations in the US and Canada such as WABC and CHUM transmitted highly processed and extended audio to 11 kHz, successfully attracting huge audiences. Early experiments with stereo AM radio involved two separate stations (both AM or sometimes one AM and one FM) broadcasting the left and right audio channels.
This system was not very practical, as it required the listener to use two separate radios. Synchronization was problematic, often resulting in "ping-pong" effects between the two channels. Reception was also likely to be different between the two stations, and many listeners used mismatching models of receivers.
AM Radio The Projects Forum. ... Hey there, I am required to build a simple AM modulation circuit and a simple AM demodulation circuit. Any simple and easy to understand circuit out there for me to...
This is a very simple AM radio circuit using only two transistors. The coil L1 and variable capacitor C1 forms the tank circuit. Transistor Q1 does the job of demodulation. The demodulated signal w...
The circuit for a powerful AM transmitter using ceramic resonator/filter of 3.587 MHz is presented here. This circuit is based on transistor for the core operation of the circuit. Resonators/filter...
There is talk again of improving the AM band, with the Federal Communications Commission asking for comments on various proposals that range from across-the-board power increases to essentially shu...
The radio broadcasting station has modulated the voice and music and has been transmitted via antenna. Now your AM radio should have a circuit which demodulates this received signal back into the m...
The changes had been necessary to make the circuit compatible with a digital quite than analogue AM car radio. The main distinction between digital AM radios and their all-analogue predecessors is ...
