How do I modulate a signal for radio transmission (SDR) in Java?

Question

Off Topic: Let me start by saying Java is completely new to me. I've been programming for over 15 years and never have had a need for it beyond modifying others' codebases, so please forgive my ignorance and possibly improper terminology. I'm also not very familiar with RF, so if I'm way left field here, please let me know!

I'm building an SDR (Software Defined Radio) radio transmitter, and while I can successfully transmit on a frequency, when I send the stream (either from the device's microphone or bytes from a tone generator), what is coming through my handheld receiver sounds like static.

I believe this to be due to my receiver being set up to receive NFM (Narrowband Frequency Modulation) and WFM (Wideband Frequency Modulation) while the transmission coming from my SDR is sending raw, unmodulated data.

My question is: how do I modulate audio bytes (i.e. an InputStream) so that the resulting bytes are modulated in FM (Frequency Modulation) or AM (Amplitude Modulation), which I can then transmit through the SDR?

I can't seem to find a class or package that handles modulation (eventually I'm going to have to modulate WFM, FM, AM, SB, LSB, USB, DSB, etc.) despite there being quite a few open-source SDR codebases, but if you know where I can find this, that basically answers this question. Everything I've found so far has been for demodulation.

This is a class I've built around Xarph's Answer here on StackOverflow, it simply returns a byte array containing a simple, unmodulated audio signal, which can then be used to play sound through speakers (or transmit over an SDR, but due to the result not being properly modulated, it doesn't come through correctly on the receiver's end, which is what I'm having trouble figuring out)

public class ToneGenerator {

    public static byte[] generateTone() {
        return generateTone(60, 1000, 8000);
    }

    public static byte[] generateTone(double duration) {
        return generateTone(duration, 1000, 8000);
    }

    public static byte[] generateTone(double duration, double freqOfTone) {
        return generateTone(duration, freqOfTone, 8000);
    }

    public static byte[] generateTone(double duration, double freqOfTone, int sampleRate) {
        double dnumSamples = duration * sampleRate;
        dnumSamples = Math.ceil(dnumSamples);
        int numSamples = (int) dnumSamples;
        double sample[] = new double[numSamples];
        byte generatedSnd[] = new byte[2 * numSamples];


        for (int i = 0; i < numSamples; ++i) {    // Fill the sample array
            sample[i] = Math.sin(freqOfTone * 2 * Math.PI * i / (sampleRate));
        }

        // convert to 16 bit pcm sound array
        // assumes the sample buffer is normalized.
        // convert to 16 bit pcm sound array
        // assumes the sample buffer is normalised.
        int idx = 0;
        int i = 0 ;

        int ramp = numSamples / 20 ;                                     // Amplitude ramp as a percent of sample count


        for (i = 0; i< ramp; ++i) {                                      // Ramp amplitude up (to avoid clicks)
            double dVal = sample[i];
            // Ramp up to maximum
            final short val = (short) ((dVal * 32767 * i/ramp));
            // in 16 bit wav PCM, first byte is the low order byte
            generatedSnd[idx++] = (byte) (val & 0x00ff);
            generatedSnd[idx++] = (byte) ((val & 0xff00) >>> 8);
        }


        for (i = i; i< numSamples - ramp; ++i) {                         // Max amplitude for most of the samples
            double dVal = sample[i];
            // scale to maximum amplitude
            final short val = (short) ((dVal * 32767));
            // in 16 bit wav PCM, first byte is the low order byte
            generatedSnd[idx++] = (byte) (val & 0x00ff);
            generatedSnd[idx++] = (byte) ((val & 0xff00) >>> 8);
        }

        for (i = i; i< numSamples; ++i) {                                // Ramp amplitude down
            double dVal = sample[i];
            // Ramp down to zero
            final short val = (short) ((dVal * 32767 * (numSamples-i)/ramp ));
            // in 16 bit wav PCM, first byte is the low order byte
            generatedSnd[idx++] = (byte) (val & 0x00ff);
            generatedSnd[idx++] = (byte) ((val & 0xff00) >>> 8);
        }

        return generatedSnd;
    }
}

An answer to this doesn't necessarily need to be code, actually theory and an understanding of how FM or AM modulation works when it comes to processing a byte array and converting it to the proper format would probably be more valuable since I'll have to implement more modes in the future.

Answer 1

There is a lot that I don't know about radio. But I think I can say a couple things about the basics of modulation and the problem at hand given the modicum of physics that I have and the experience of coding an FM synthesizer.

First off, I think you might find it easier to work with the source signal's PCM data points if you convert them to normalized floats (ranging from -1f to 1f), rather than working with shorts.

The target frequency of the receiver, 510-1700 kHz (AM radio) is significantly faster than the sample rate of the source sound (presumably 44.1kHz). Assuming you have a way to output the resulting data, the math would involve taking a PCM value from your signal, scaling it appropriately (IDK how much) and multiplying the value against the PCM data points generated by your carrier signal that corresponds to the time interval.

For example, if the carrier signal were 882 kHz, you would multiply a sequence of 20 carrier signal values with the source signal value before moving on to the next source signal value. Again, my ignorance: the tech may have some sort of smoothing algorithm for the transition between the source signal data points. I really don't know about that or not, or at what stage it occurs.

For FM, we have carrier signals in the MHz range, so we are talking orders of magnitude more data being generated per each source signal value than with AM. I don't know the exact algorithm used but here is a simple conceptual way to implement frequency modulation of a sine that I used with my FM synthesizer.

Let's say you have a table with 1000 data points that represents a single sine wave that ranges between -1f to 1f. Let's say you have a cursor that repeatedly traverses the table. If the cursor advanced exactly 1 data point at 44100 fps and delivered the values at that rate, the resulting tone would be 44.1 Hz, yes? But you can also traverse the table via intervals larger than 1, for example 1.5. When the cursor lands in between two table values, one can use linear interpolation to determine the value to output. The cursor increment of 1.5 would result in the sine wave being pitched at 66.2 Hz.

What I think is happening with FM is that this cursor increment is continuously varied, and the amount it is varied depends on some sort of scaling from the source signal translated into a range of increments.

The specifics of the scaling are unknown to me. But suppose a signal is being transmitted with a carrier of 10MHz and ranges ~1% (roughly from 9.9 MHz to 10.1 MHz), the normalized source signal would have some sort of algorithm where a PCM value of -1 match an increment that traverses the carrier wave causing it to produce the slower frequency and +1 match an increment that traverses the carrier wave causing it to produce the higher frequency. So, if an increment of +1 delivers 10 MHz, maybe a source wave PCM signal of -1 elicits a cursor increment of +0.99, a PCM value of -0.5 elicits an increment of +0.995, a value of +0.5 elicits an increment of +1.005, a value of +1 elicits a cursor increment of 1.01.

This is pure speculation on my part as to the relationship between the source PCM values and how that are used to modulate the carrier frequency. But maybe it helps give a concrete image of the basic mechanism?

(I use something similar, employing a cursor to iterate over wav PCM data points at arbitrary increments, in AudioCue (a class for playing back audio data based on the Java Clip), for real time frequency shifting. Code line 1183 holds the cursor that iterates over the PCM data that was imported from the wav file, with the variable idx holding the cursor increment amount. Line 1317 is where we fetch the audio value after incrementing the cursor. Code lines 1372 has the method readFractionalFrame() which performs the linear interpolation. Real time volume changes are also implemented, and I use smoothing on the values that are provided from the public input hooks.)

Again, IDK if any sort of smoothing is used between source signal values or not. In my experience a lot of the tech involves filtering and other tricks of various sorts that improve fidelity or processing calculations.