Talk:Carson bandwidth rule

is this actually true?

Yes. Added reference to Couch and removed dispute indicator. Isotropic 00:06, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

The main drawback in Carson's rule is that it cannot be used when the modulated message signal is a square wave. This is attributed to the symmetry issues of the spectrum.66.156.90.250 21:45, 24 November 2006 (UTC)


 * A square wave is nothing but a series of sine waves, Carson's rule applies here too once you decide what the highest modulating sine wave is (i.e. the rise and fall time of your square wave). Added a note about this to make it seem a little less magical. Altaphon (talk) 03:21, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I have a concern about the sentence "Carson's rule originates from John Renshaw Carson's 1922 paper [1]," specifically the phrase "originates from". I read the reference (it is available on Google Books), and although Carson works out the theory for frequency modulation, he does not state this bandwidth requirement. He does state that the bandwidth is at least 2 fm. Possibly there is a later attribution to Carson of Carson's Rule. Maybe we could change the phrase to "follows from"? Jwyrwas (talk) 18:54, 28 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I concur with this concern. I have read the paper cited and it does not contain "Carson's Rule."  It would be interesting to identify the original source of "Carson's Rule."  (I don't know what that original source is.  I came to the Wikipedia in the hope of identifying it.) Doug iowa (talk) 20:22, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Last paragraph
The last paragraph claims that any modulation will have infinite sidebands. I'm fairly sure that it should read "angle modulation." AM, for one, does not have infinite sidebands. (Unless the intelligence does, such as a squarewave.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.171.31.157 (talk) 17:27, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

How can one say that Carsons Rule has little value in spectrum planning? This is blatantly false. It is at the core of spectrum planning. refer to TSB-88D for an extensive education on the subject. The RFI-EMI-GUY 17:48, 23 April 2020 (UTC)