Cosine waves are functions of the form $x \mapsto A \cos (v x+\phi)$ where $A$ is the amplitude of the wave, $v$ the frequency, and $\phi$ the phase shift. The physical superposition of two waves is obtained mathematically by adding the two wave functions. Concern the superposition of cosine waves. The identities from Exercises 49 and 50 are particularly useful in this context.
An amplitude modulation (AM) radio transmitter broadcasts an audio tone (or baseband signal) $\cos (\nu \cdot t)$ by modulating the amplitude of a very high-frequency carrier signal $A \cdot \cos (\omega \cdot t)$ by a positive factor $(1+m \cdot \cos (\nu \cdot t)),$ where the modulation index $m$ is less than $1 .$ Thus the emitted signal has the form
$$S(t)=A \cdot(1+m \cdot \cos (\nu \cdot t)) \cos (\omega \cdot t)$$
a. Use the identity from Exercise 49 to express $S(t)$ as a superposition of three cosine waves. The largest and smallest frequencies of these three waves are called sidebands.
b. Set $A=1, m=1 / 2, \nu=2,$ and $\omega=8 .$ Graph the signal $S(t)$ and envelopes $\pm(1+m \cdot \cos (\nu \cdot t))$ for $0 \leq t \leq 2 \pi$ Explain how the sidebands can be determined visually from your graph.
c. Suppose that $v_{\max }<\omega$ is the highest baseband frequency. The largest and smallest frequencies broadcast are called the upper and lower sidebands. What are they in terms of $\omega$ and $v_{\max } ?$ Their difference is called the bandwidth.
d. Carrier frequencies for AM radio range from $550 \mathrm{kHz}$ (kilohertz), or $550 \times 10^{3}$ cycles per second, to $1610 \mathrm{kHz}$. Typically, $\nu_{\max }$ can be as high as $15 \mathrm{kHz}$. An AM receiver works by recovering the audio source $\cos (\nu \cdot t)$ from the received signal $S(t),$ a process known as demodulation. Demodulation requires that the bandwidths of different radio stations that broadcast to the same location not overlap. What must the minimum frequency separation between the carrier signals of two such stations be?