Carrier Frequency

Carrier frequency is a technical term used to indicate:

  • In telecommunication systems
    • Vaguely speaking, the center frequency or the frequency of a carrier wave (radio wave)
    • The "nominal frequency" or the center frequency of an analog frequency modulation, phase modulation, or double-sideband suppressed-carrier transmission (DSB-SC) (AM-suppressed carrier), radio wave
    • In very technical language: The frequency of the unmodulated electromagnetic wave at the output of a conventional amplitude-modulated (AM-unsupressed carrier), or frequency-modulated (FM), or phase-modulated (PM) radio transmitter
    • In very technical language: The nominal frequency or center frequency of various kinds of radio signals with digital modulation -- provided that the message bit stream is a random uncorrelated sequence of equally probable ones and zeroes ("marks" and "spaces")
  • In molecular biology
    • The rate of occurrence within a living population of a broken chromosome that causes a genetic disorder

Famous quotes containing the words carrier and/or frequency:

    “We know what the animals do, what are the needs of the beaver, the bear, the salmon, and other creatures, because long ago men married them and acquired this knowledge from their animal wives. Today the priests say we lie, but we know better.”
    —native American belief, quoted by D. Jenness in “The Carrier Indians of the Bulkley River,” Bulletin no. 133, Bureau of American Ethnology (1943)

    “One is apt to be discouraged by the frequency with which Mr. Hardy has persuaded himself that a macabre subject is a poem in itself; that, if there be enough of death and the tomb in one’s theme, it needs no translation into art, the bold statement of it being sufficient.”
    —Rebecca West (1892–1983)