Frequency-shift keying
Encyclopedia
Frequency modulation
In telecommunications and signal processing, frequency modulation conveys information over a carrier wave by varying its instantaneous frequency. This contrasts with amplitude modulation, in which the amplitude of the carrier is varied while its frequency remains constant...
scheme in which digital information is transmitted through discrete frequency changes of a carrier wave
Carrier wave
In telecommunications, a carrier wave or carrier is a waveform that is modulated with an input signal for the purpose of conveying information. This carrier wave is usually a much higher frequency than the input signal...
. The simplest FSK is binary
Binary numeral system
The binary numeral system, or base-2 number system, represents numeric values using two symbols, 0 and 1. More specifically, the usual base-2 system is a positional notation with a radix of 2...
FSK (BFSK). BFSK uses a pair of discrete frequencies to transmit binary (0s and 1s) information. With this scheme, the "1" is called the mark frequency and the "0" is called the space frequency. The time domain of an FSK modulated carrier is illustrated in the figures to the right.
Minimum-shift keying
Minimum frequency-shift keying or minimum-shift keying (MSK) is a particular spectrally efficient form of coherent FSK. In MSK the difference between the higher and lower frequency is identical to half the bit rate. Consequently, the waveforms used to represent a 0 and a 1 bit differ by exactly half a carrier period.Thus, the maximum frequency deviation is
= 0.25 fm, where fm is the maximum modulating frequency. As a result, the modulation index m is 0.25. This is the smallest FSK modulation index
Modulation index
The modulation index of a modulation scheme describes by how much the modulated variable of the carrier signal varies around its unmodulated level. It is defined differently in each modulation scheme. See:*Amplitude modulation index...
that can be chosen such that the waveforms for 0 and 1 are orthogonal. A variant of MSK called GMSK is used in the GSM mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
standard.
FSK is commonly used in Caller ID
Caller ID
Caller ID , also called calling line identification or calling number identification or Calling Line Identification Presentation , is a telephone service, available in analog and digital phone systems and most Voice over Internet Protocol applications, that transmits a caller's number to...
and remote metering applications: see FSK standards for use in Caller ID and remote metering
FSK standards for use in Caller ID and remote metering
Frequency-shift keying is used over telephone lines for Caller ID and remote metering applications. There are several variations of this technology.- European Telecommunications Standards Institute FSK :...
for more details
Audio FSK
Audio frequency-shift keying (AFSK) is a modulationModulation
In electronics and telecommunications, modulation is the process of varying one or more properties of a high-frequency periodic waveform, called the carrier signal, with a modulating signal which typically contains information to be transmitted...
technique by which digital
Digital
A digital system is a data technology that uses discrete values. By contrast, non-digital systems use a continuous range of values to represent information...
data
Data
The term data refers to qualitative or quantitative attributes of a variable or set of variables. Data are typically the results of measurements and can be the basis of graphs, images, or observations of a set of variables. Data are often viewed as the lowest level of abstraction from which...
is represented by changes in the frequency
Frequency
Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency.The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency...
(pitch
Pitch (music)
Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...
) of an audio
Sound
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
tone, yielding an encoded signal suitable for transmission via radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
or telephone
Telephone
The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...
. Normally, the transmitted audio alternates between two tones: one, the "mark", represents a binary
Binary numeral system
The binary numeral system, or base-2 number system, represents numeric values using two symbols, 0 and 1. More specifically, the usual base-2 system is a positional notation with a radix of 2...
one; the other, the "space", represents a binary zero.
AFSK differs from regular frequency-shift keying in performing the modulation at baseband
Baseband
In telecommunications and signal processing, baseband is an adjective that describes signals and systems whose range of frequencies is measured from close to 0 hertz to a cut-off frequency, a maximum bandwidth or highest signal frequency; it is sometimes used as a noun for a band of frequencies...
frequencies. In radio applications, the AFSK-modulated signal normally is being used to modulate an RF
Radio frequency
Radio frequency is a rate of oscillation in the range of about 3 kHz to 300 GHz, which corresponds to the frequency of radio waves, and the alternating currents which carry radio signals...
carrier
Carrier wave
In telecommunications, a carrier wave or carrier is a waveform that is modulated with an input signal for the purpose of conveying information. This carrier wave is usually a much higher frequency than the input signal...
(using a conventional technique, such as AM
Amplitude modulation
Amplitude modulation is a technique used in electronic communication, most commonly for transmitting information via a radio carrier wave. AM works by varying the strength of the transmitted signal in relation to the information being sent...
or FM
Frequency modulation
In telecommunications and signal processing, frequency modulation conveys information over a carrier wave by varying its instantaneous frequency. This contrasts with amplitude modulation, in which the amplitude of the carrier is varied while its frequency remains constant...
) for transmission.
AFSK is not always used for high-speed data communications, since it is far less efficient in both power and bandwidth than most other modulation modes. In addition to its simplicity, however, AFSK has the advantage that encoded signals will pass through AC
Alternating current
In alternating current the movement of electric charge periodically reverses direction. In direct current , the flow of electric charge is only in one direction....
-coupled links, including most equipment originally designed to carry music or speech.
AFSK is used in the Emergency Alert System
Emergency Alert System
The Emergency Alert System is a national warning system in the United States put into place on January 1, 1997, when it superseded the Emergency Broadcast System , which itself had superseded the CONELRAD System...
to notify stations of the type of emergency, locations affected, and the time of issue without actually hearing the text of the alert.
Applications
Most early telephone-line modemModem
A modem is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data...
s used audio frequency-shift keying to send and receive data, up to rates of about 1200 bits per second. The common Bell 103
Bell 103 modem
The Bell 103 modem or Bell 103 dataset was the second commercial modem for computers, released by AT&T in 1962. It allowed digital data to be transmitted over regular unconditioned telephone lines at a speed of 300 bits per second. It followed the introduction of the 110 baud Bell 101 dataset in...
and Bell 202
Bell 202 modem
The Bell 202 modem was an early modem developed by Bell System. It specifies audio frequency-shift keying to encode and transfer data at a rate of 1200 bits per second, half-duplex and at a rate of 1800 bits per second full duplex using differential phase-shift keying modulation...
modems used this technique. Even today, North American caller ID
Caller ID
Caller ID , also called calling line identification or calling number identification or Calling Line Identification Presentation , is a telephone service, available in analog and digital phone systems and most Voice over Internet Protocol applications, that transmits a caller's number to...
uses 1200 baud AFSK in the form of the Bell 202 standard. Some early microcomputer
Microcomputer
A microcomputer is a computer with a microprocessor as its central processing unit. They are physically small compared to mainframe and minicomputers...
s used a specific form of AFSK modulation, the Kansas City standard
Kansas City standard
The Kansas City Standard , or Byte standard, is a digital data format for audio cassette drives. Byte magazine sponsored a symposium in November 1975 in Kansas City, Missouri to develop a standard for storage of digital computer data on inexpensive consumer quality cassettes, at a time when...
, to store data on audio cassettes. AFSK is still widely used in amateur radio
Amateur radio
Amateur radio is the use of designated radio frequency spectrum for purposes of private recreation, non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, and emergency communication...
, as it allows data transmission through unmodified voiceband equipment. Radio control
Radio control
Radio control is the use of radio signals to remotely control a device. The term is used frequently to refer to the control of model vehicles from a hand-held radio transmitter...
gear uses FSK, but calls it FM and PPM
Pulse-position modulation
Pulse-position modulation is a form of signal modulation in which M message bits are encoded by transmitting a single pulse in one of 2^M possible time-shifts. This is repeated every T seconds, such that the transmitted bit rate is M/T bits per second...
instead.
AFSK is also used in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
' Emergency Alert System
Emergency Alert System
The Emergency Alert System is a national warning system in the United States put into place on January 1, 1997, when it superseded the Emergency Broadcast System , which itself had superseded the CONELRAD System...
to transmit warning information. It is used at higher bitrate
Bitrate
In telecommunications and computing, bit rate is the number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time....
s for Weathercopy used on Weatheradio
Weatheradio
A weather radio service is a broadcast service that airs weather reports. When the radio is on and tuned to the weather band, it airs both normal and emergency weather information...
by NOAA in the U.S.
The CHU shortwave radio station in Ottawa
Ottawa
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
broadcasts an exclusive digital time signal encoded using AFSK modulation.
See also
- Amplitude-shift keyingAmplitude-shift keyingAmplitude-shift keying is a form of modulation that represents digital data as variations in the amplitude of a carrier wave.Any digital modulation scheme uses a finite number of distinct signals to represent digital data. ASK uses a finite number of amplitudes, each assigned a unique pattern of...
(ASK) - Continuous-phase frequency-shift keying (CPFSK)
- Dual-tone multi-frequencyDual-tone multi-frequencyDual-tone multi-frequency signaling is used for telecommunication signaling over analog telephone lines in the voice-frequency band between telephone handsets and other communications devices and the switching center. The version of DTMF that is used in push-button telephones for tone dialing is...
(DTMF), another encoding technique representing data by pairs of audio frequencies - Frequency-change signalingFrequency-change signalingIn telecommunication, frequency-change signaling is a telegraph signaling method in which one or more particular frequencies correspond to each desired signaling condition of a telegraph code. The transition from one set of frequencies to the other may be a continuous or a discontinuous change in...
- Multiple frequency-shift keyingMultiple frequency-shift keyingMultiple frequency-shift keying is a variation of frequency-shift keying that uses more than two frequencies. MFSK is a form of M-ary orthogonal modulation, where each symbol consists of one element from an alphabet of orthogonal waveforms...
(MFSK) - Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)
- Phase-shift keyingPhase-shift keyingPhase-shift keying is a digital modulation scheme that conveys data by changing, or modulating, the phase of a reference signal ....
(PSK) - Federal Standard 1037CFederal Standard 1037CFederal Standard 1037C, titled Telecommunications: Glossary of Telecommunication Terms is a United States Federal Standard, issued by the General Services Administration pursuant to the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, as amended....
- MIL-STD-188MIL-STD-188MIL-STD-188 is a series of U.S. military standards relating to telecommunications.-Purpose:Faced with “past technical deficiencies in telecommunications systems and equipment and software…that were traced to basic inadequacies in the application of telecommunication standards and to the lack of a...