Teaching phase-sensitive demodulation for signal conditioning to undergraduate students

Phase-sensitive demodulation PSD is important for signal conditioning and communication. This paper introduces an approach to teaching PSD for signal conditioning to undergraduate science and engineering students. The goal is to help students understand the principles of PSD for signal conditioning because they can see waveforms at various test points and the effect of the phase angle on the output of a PSD circuit using conventional laboratory equipment. Students can also gain practical skills by building electronic circuits, including a switch-based PSD circuit, a phase shifter, a switch-driving circuit, and a low-pass filter, on a breadboard using real electronic components. © 2010 American Association of Physics Teachers. DOI: 10.1119/1.3428642