A casual understanding of how AM radio works is pretty easy to come by, and standard FM is only a little more complicated. Things can go off the tracks a bit with stereo FM, though — figuring out how they squeeze two separate audio tracks onto one radio signal is a bit of a head-scratcher. In that case, wrapping your head around the concept might be helped by mocking up a stereo FM signal with an arbitrary waveform generator and a little bit of Python.
Not that [Sebastian] of Baltic Lab was unfamiliar with multiplex FM theory, mind you. As he explains it, his goal was to generate a valid stereo FM signal with a different pure tone on each channel, 700 Hz on the left and 2,200 Hz on the right. Luckily, [Sebastian] has a nice AWG, the Siglent SDG1032X, which has an Ethernet connection that can be used to control it remotely along with PyVISA, a Python package for controlling instruments using the Virtual Instrument Software Architecture protocol.
The meat of this project, and what really helps drive home the concept of putting multiple audio signals onto an FM signal, lies in the Python code that generates the component parts. [Sebastian] does a great job explaining how he programatically generates the sum and difference signals along with the 19 kHz pilot tone, and puts them all together into one waveform. The output of the program is used to generate a series of values that are sent to the arbitrary waveform generator, which outputs the desired FM signal. Looking at the output on a spectrum analyzer, the two audio tones are clearly visible, as are the attenuated pilot tone and some other spikes a little further up.
Just add an antenna to the setup and you’d have the world’s dullest FM radio station — but at least it’d be in stereo. Or if you want to check out the origin story for FM radio, we’ve got something for that too.
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