is the frequency of the triangle waveform that
the control or modulating signal is compared
to.
carrier lifetime
the average duration an
electron or a hole stays in a certain state.
carrier phase
the phase of a sinusoidal
signal that is the carrier in a modulation
scheme such as AM, FM, SSB, etc. The car-
rier may be defined in the form
A cos(ω
c
t +
φ). The carrier is specified by the parameters
A (amplitude), ω
c
(carrier frequency), and
φ
(carrier phase).
carrier shift
the difference in frequency
between the steady state, mark, and space in
frequency shift keying (FSK) systems.
carrier signal
the RF signal in a com-
munications system that has the modulating
signal superimposed on it. This signal may
have its frequency, amplitude, or phase varied
to form a modulated signal. Without modu-
lation it is a simple RF signal.
Many communication systems rely on the
concept of sinusoidal amplitude modulation,
in which a complex exponential signal c(t)
has its amplitude multiplied (modulated) by
the information-bearing signal
x(t). This
signal
x(t) is typically referred to as the mod-
ulating signal and the signal
c(t) as the carrier
signal. The modulated signal
y(t) is then the
product of these two signals.
y(t) = x(t)c(t)
carrier suppression
in SSB communi-
cations, the degree to which the carrier am-
plitude is reduced from its original value
out of the modulator. ( See also
balanced
modulator
. )
Carrier suppression is gen-
erally used as a method to significantly re-
duce the amount of unnecessary transmitted
power, based upon the fact that no informa-
tion is contained within the carrier amplitude
in an AM waveform. It is sometimes desir-
able to only partly suppress the carrier, leav-
ing what is termed a “pilot tone” at the carrier
frequency.
carrier synchronization
a synchroniza-
tion technique used in radio receivers. In all
radio receivers some sort of carrier frequency
synchronization is required; the phase syn-
chronization is needed only if phase coherent
demodulation is desired. Can be categorized
as open and closed loop carrier synchroniza-
tion.
carrier-sense multiple access (CSMA)
a
random-access method of sharing a bus-type
communications medium in which a poten-
tial user of the medium listens before begin-
ning to transmit. The channel sensing signif-
icantly reduces the probability of collisions.
Compare with
ALOHA
.
carrier-to-interference ratio (CIR)
sim-
ilar to signal-to-interference ratio but usu-
ally used in cellular communication systems
where the carrier refers to the signal of inter-
est and the interference refers to interference
from other transmitters in the system. See
also
signal-to-interference ratio
.
carrier-to-noise ratio
the ratio of the am-
plitude of the carrier signal to that of the noise
in the IF bandwidth measured at any point
in the receiver before any nonlinear process
such as amplitude limiting or detection. The
carrier to noise ratio is typically expressed in
decibels.
carrierless amplitude/phase modulation
(CAP)
an implementation of a quadrature
amplitude modulation transmitter in which
the passband in-phase and quadrature signals
are generated directly via quadrature digi-
tal filters. A recent application for CAP is
high-speed digital subscriber lines. See also
quadrature amplitude modulation
.
carry
overflow signal that occurs when
the sum of the operands at the inputs of the
adder equals the base. A binary adder, adding
1
+ 1 will produce a sum of 0 and carry of 1.
c
2000 by CRC Press LLC