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Concept
Envelope (waves)
Summary
In physics and engineering, the envelope of an oscillating signal is a smooth curve outlining its extremes. The envelope thus generalizes the concept of a constant amplitude into an instantaneous amplitude. The figure illustrates a modulated sine wave varying between an upper envelope and a lower envelope. The envelope function may be a function of time, space, angle, or indeed of any variable.
A common situation resulting in an envelope function in both space x and time t is the superposition of two waves of almost the same wavelength and frequency:
which uses the trigonometric formula for the addition of two sine waves, and the approximation Δλ ≪ λ:
Here the modulation wavelength λmod is given by:
The modulation wavelength is double that of the envelope itself because each half-wavelength of the modulating cosine wave governs both positive and negative values of the modulated sine wave. Likewise the beat frequency is that of the envelope, twice that of the modulating wave, or 2Δf.
If this wave is a sound wave, the ear hears the frequency associated with f and the amplitude of this sound varies with the beat frequency.
Wave#Phase velocity and group velocity
The argument of the sinusoids above apart from a factor 2pi are:
with subscripts C and E referring to the carrier and the envelope. The same amplitude F of the wave results from the same values of ξC and ξE, each of which may itself return to the same value over different but properly related choices of x and t. This invariance means that one can trace these waveforms in space to find the speed of a position of fixed amplitude as it propagates in time; for the argument of the carrier wave to stay the same, the condition is:
which shows to keep a constant amplitude the distance Δx is related to the time interval Δt by the so-called phase velocity vp
On the other hand, the same considerations show the envelope propagates at the so-called group velocity vg:
A more common expression for the group velocity is obtained by introducing the wavevector k:
We notice that for small changes Δλ, the magnitude of the corresponding small change in wavevector, say Δk, is:
so the group velocity can be rewritten as:
where ω is the frequency in radians/s: ω = 2pif.
Official source
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