Multiplier square or sinewave input

"Terry Osbourne"

** Wot - a real one, or just some audio analysis software on your PC ? ** Multiplying two frequencies produces an output at two new frequencies at the sum and difference of the two originals.

Eg:

1000 Hz multiplied by 10Hz results in a signal with components at 990Hz & 1010 Hz.

1000 Hz multiplied by 1 Hz results in a signal with components at 999Hz and 1001 Hz.

So your analyser will need better than 1 Hz resolution around 1000 Hz to sort it out.

Or did you imagine a linear multiplier IC was a " frequency multiplier " ????

I think you did.

** Spectral analysis would be simplified if the fixed frequency is a sine wave - otherwise there will be similar products around 3 kHz, 5 kHz , 7kHz, 11 khz etc to get rid off.

A square wave can be converted to a good sine by a steep low pass filter set at or to cut off just above the fundamental frequency - with say 18 db octave slope or better.

........ Phil

What we want won't work wery well. :-( If you want to record very low frequency signals with the soundcard, you can use a similar technique. No multiplier needed, just an opamp and a 1kHz square wave generator. Chopp your signal with that squarewave with a phase inverter and record also the squarewave with the other channel. You can then retrieve your original signal and with some audio software(Audacy) you can pitch-shift to any ratio and even listen to it.

--
ciao Ban
Apricale, Italy

What's normally done in a dynamic signal analyzer (aka FFT spectrum analyzer) is to digitize the signal, and then multiply digitally by sine and cosine to shift the frequency. Do a search for "image rejection mixer." Of course, since you want to look at LOW frequencies, you wouldn't need to do that. If you can simply digitize the signal in its frequency range, you can use an FFT to look at the spectral components. You may wish to use windowing to keep artifacts from the abrupt edges of the sampled block from spreading throughout the FFT'd spectrum.

If you want to use a multiplier to move the spectrum up to a range where you can look at it with a spectrum analyzer that won't go to low enough frequency, you can do that, but be aware that just multiplying gives you both sum and difference frequencies. If you use a square wave, if it's a perfect square wave, you'll have images of the spectrum at the (say 1kHz) fundamental, and at all odd harmonics (3kHz, 5kHz,

7kHz, ...) If your signal of interest is narrow-band enough, that won't matter. You can insure it is narrow band enough if you low-pass-filter it before feeding it to the multiplier. You need to do that anyway, so that other frequency components don't alias into places you don't want them. If you use a square wave, you might as well use a frequency mixer instead of a multiplier. They tend to be cheaper. If you decide to filter a square wave to make it sinusoidal, use a low pass filter that has steeper cutoff than Phil's suggested 18dB/octave; that won't attenuate the 3rd harmonic much at all. It can be easier to just use a bandpass filter for a single fixed frequency. You can also just filter the OUTPUT of the mixer/multiplier. But again, if the signals of interest occupy a narrow bandwidth, it shouldn't matter. You can just let the spectrum analyzer get rid of the unwanted bands, since they are far away from the interesting stuff.

Cheers, Tom

The resulting transposed frequencies will be very hard to see because they are so close together. A better solution is to digitize your low-frequency source and play it back at a faster rate thereby spreading it out across a larger bandwidth.

For example, if your frequency band of interest is 0 - 1 Hz, sample at

16 samples/s and play back at 16 k samples/s, giving 0 - 1000 Hz.

-- Joe Legris

A multiplier doesn't do this as already mentioned. You'd want a single sideband modulator. This basically is a set of two multipliers operating in quadrature and with two splitter/combiners. If adjusted properly, the carrier and the other sideband are suppressed by say 30..40dB.

Rene

--
Ing.Buero R.Tschaggelar - http://www.ibrtses.com
& commercial newsgroups - http://www.talkto.net

As mentioned, multiplication will shift the spectrum up by 1 KHZ, but not spread it out. 10 Hz input will make a line at 1010 Hz. You'll also get a reversed, mirror image spectrum that goes down from 1 KHz (another line at 990.) A square wave will work just as well, if you don't care about the additional stuff it will create around 3,5,7... KHz. Multiplication of an analog signal by a square wave (ie, by +-1) is simple and can be made very accurate.

This is useful if you have a spectrum analyzer with good resolution but that doesn't sweep all the way down to zero frequency.

John

because

But...if you've gone to the trouble to digitize it, why "play it back"? Why not just apply apodization and perform an FFT on it, and be done with it?

Cheers, Tom