Technique for recovering an amplitude modulated carrier

摘要

Method and apparatus for processing an analog signal comprising one or more digital data streams encoded as a series of pulses is described. In a preferred embodiment, the analog signal is input to a mixer for mixing the signal with a signal of a local oscillator frequency to increase the frequency of the analog signal. The signal output from the mixer is applied to a narrow band filter such that a series of pulses is output from the filter when a signal of the frequency to which the filter is tuned is applied to the filter. The pulses are detected by a wave shaper, which uses them to identify the presence of a bit transition in the encoded data stream represented by the series of pulses. The wave shaper determines the polarity of the pulse, that is, whether it is positive or negative, which indicates whether the corresponding transition of the encoded data stream is positive or negative, respectively, then uses this information to reconstruct each digital bit, and hence the entire data stream. In an alternative embodiment, a plurality of filter/wave shaper pairs are used to recover multiple digital data streams from the analog signal.