Demodulation

Demodulation is extracting the original information-bearing signal from a modulated carrier wave. A demodulator is an electronic circuit (or computer program in a software-defined radio) that is used to recover the information content from the modulated carrier wave. There are many types of modulation so there are many types of demodulators. The signal output from a demodulator may represent sound (an analog audio signal), images (an analog video signal) or binary data (a digital signal).

These terms are traditionally used in connection with radio receivers, but many other systems use many kinds of demodulators. For example, in a modem, which is a contraction of the terms modulator/demodulator, a demodulator is used to extract a serial digital data stream from a carrier signal which is used to carry it through a telephone line, coaxial cable, or optical fiber.

Demodulation was first used in radio receivers. In the wireless telegraphy radio systems used during the first 3 decades of radio (1884-1914) the transmitter did not communicate audio (sound) but transmitted information in the form of pulses of radio waves that represented text messages in Morse code. Therefore, the receiver merely had to detect the presence or absence of the radio signal, and produce a click sound. The device that did this was called a detector. The first detectors were coherers, simple devices that acted as a switch. The term detector stuck, was used for other types of demodulators and continues to be used to the present day for a demodulator in a radio receiver.

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