Arctic Monkeys: Amplitude Modulation
“You can’t worry what people think”
That’s what the lead singer of an English rock band Arctic Monkeys said. AM has become one of Arctic Monkeys’ most successful albums. The album cover looks pretty cool for me. I’ve been guessing that AM stands for Arctic Monkeys but after studying Digital Communication in college, I think I’m gonna change my mind. What if AM actually stands for Amplitude Modulation instead of Arctic Monkeys? It looks the same!
Wait, what is Amplitude Modulation anyway? We’ll start with the definition of modulation itself first. Modulation is a technique used in electronic communication to increase the reach of the signal transfers! To modulate a signal, we can vary the components of the signal such as amplitude, frequency, or phase. In the modulation process, we need two signals, message and carrier signal. The message signal is the signal which we want to modulate. Carrier signal is the sinusoidal wave signal used to carry or help our message signal to reach its goal! This video explains a great analogy of how we can use those signals for modulation.
For the sake of simplicity, amplitude is the ‘height’ of a signal measured from the x-axis as shown by the image below.
AM (amplitude-modulated) signal= CS (carrier signal)+ MS (message signal) is basically the formula for this process. But hold on, we’re not using that addition to count the value like 1+1=2. We use that to see how the signal is shaped after being modulated.
Wait, what about this one? Does this count as an amplitude modulated signal too?
Let’s dive into a deeper comparison…
So, what do you think the AM Album stands for? Is it really Arctic Monkeys? Or what if Alex Turner is just trying to teach us about electronic communication? No one knows…
