What is Modulation – Easiest Way to Understand with a Story

What is modulation? Modulation is the basic concept of wireless communication. Those who are studying telecommunication, wireless communication or want to understand any kind of wireless communication, the concept named modulation is must.

But I am quite sure that after doing a lot of high voltage classes with carrier signal, base band signal, instantaneous blah! blah! blah!  in your university or educational institution, the concept of modulation is still not clear like crystal to you!

This is normal. I after completion of my undergraduate study in telecommunication also I was not clear about modulation. But the concept of modulation is very simple and I am going to explain it to you in a simple way with an example:

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Easiest Example to Understand What is Modulation:

Suppose you are standing on the roof of a building and your best friend is standing on the roof of another building and the distance between the building is around 60 meter. Now, you want to throw a piece of A4 paper from your building to your friends building. Do you think that you will be able to successfully throw the paper to the other building? Of course not! Because, the paper is very light and there is air in the environment. So, it will not reach to the other build!

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Now what is the solution? Lets take a piece of brick and wrap the brick with the paper that you want to send. Now throw the paper with brick. What do you think, will it reach to the other roof now? Yes, you are correct! The paper will reach to the other building. Because now the weight of the paper with the brick is high and it can reach to the other roof. Now you know what is modulation?

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If we compare the above scenario with “Modulation” then the paper is the base band signal, the piece of brick is the carrier signal and the process of wrapping the brick with the paper is called “Modulation”. The process of throwing the paper with brick is called transmission. So, the whole process is clear to you now? I have explained what is modulation? in the video below:

The paper is the base-band signal because this is my main message that I want to transmit. The brick is called the carrier signal because this is helping to carry the baseband signal. The process of wrapping the piece of brick with the paper is called modulation because modulation is the process of combining baseband signal with the carrier signal. I hope the above discussing and video helped you to understand modulation. If you like the post and video then please share it with your friends and leave a comment!

There is another cool technology which is coming to rock the data speed. The WiFi data speed will be very negligible to that technology. The name of the technology is LiFi. You can read the post How Li-Fi will Change the Future Wireless Communication.

Himadri Subrah Saha

Himadri is an ICT Professional who writes for his technology tips & tricks related blog TechnTechie. Though it is hard to balance time in between professional life and blogging, he still manages time to work for his own blog and writes almost regularly. The dashboard of this WordPress is the only place where he does not feel tired! Read my other blogs @ PetCare and Teleinfo