iVenky
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In simple words, synchronous demodulation supresses the signal components orthogonal to the carrier, resulting in a 3 dB SNR improvement, presumed you can perfectly lock to the carrier.
At high SNR there is no difference between the two. At near 1:1 SNR the envelope detector is 6 dB worse. One main advantage of the product one is that leakage from adjacent channels are at a frequency higher than the audio on the desired channel and can be eliminated with a low pass filter in the following audio stages.
Noise can be split into two orthogonal components, as any othogonal or uncorrelated signals they add by their power rather than magnitude.how do you say that it is 3db
In simple words, synchronous demodulation supresses the signal components orthogonal to the carrier, resulting in a 3 dB SNR improvement, presumed you can perfectly lock to the carrier.
For a peak detecting envelope detector, the actual output SNR might not always be different by 3dB. But the input-referred SNR will be 3dB better with coherent demodulation.This is not right. Whilst it is correct in that the synchronous demodulator suppresses the noise in the quadrature channel, which is half the noise, the effect of noise on the envelope detector is much more complex.
The envelope detector is always worse, but rarely by 3dB.
In high S/N situations (e.g. consumer AM radio) the two systems perform much the same. This is because the non-linear envelope detector under high S/N only really responds to noise in the in-phase channel (the amplitude noise) and not the quadrature channel (essentially the phase noise).
In the other extreme where the signal level is much less than the noise level, the noise captures the envelope and it is hard to define any sort of meaningful S/N ratio. Here the envelope detector is much worse than the product detector, by greater than 3dB.
For a starting analysis look in Proakis and Salehi "Communication System Engineering" p220-225
I didn't apply to retell the theory of envelope detectors.The envelope detector is always worse, but rarely by 3dB.
You are able to define a demodulator model where the 3 dB property is achieved. If it's representative for typical receivers is a different system. According to my experience, the 3 dB assumption is fairly valid for real world demodulation of smallband signals. I'm able to reproduce it in measurements.
P.S.: A peak amplitude evaluating envelope detector correlates both quadrature components, so I agree that the SNR difference can be any value between 0 and 6 dB for it.
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