Single-tone FM sidebands ($f_k=f_c+k{f}_m$)

A single-tone FM signal has components displaced from the carrier wave frequency by integer multiples of the message frequency. These are temporal sidebands; the spatial sidebands used to perturb a spatial pattern are a related but different setting. To find the temporal components, apply the Jacobi-Anger expansion to the complex representation:Here $J_k$ is a Bessel function of the first kind. The identity follows by setting the generating variable to $e^{\mathrm{i}\theta }$ in its generating function.^[ref]

Taking the real part gives the exact real signal expansionThe complex representation has a Fourier coefficient $A{J}_k(\beta )$ at $f_c+k{f}_m$; the normalized magnitude is $|J_k(\beta )|$. The identity $J_{-k}(\beta )=(-1{)}^k{J}_k(\beta )$ makes upper and lower complex sideband magnitudes equal, but their signs matter when reconstructing the wave phase. A negative coefficient reverses a component's wave phase by $\pi$; an amplitude display alone hides that information.

For $\beta =5$, original evaluation gives $J_0(5)\approx -0.17760$, $J_1(5)\approx -0.32758$, $J_5(5)\approx 0.26114$ and $J_6(5)\approx 0.13105$. Thus there are appreciable components at $14$ and $26\mathrm{Hz}$, outside the $15$–$25\mathrm{Hz}$ range of the instantaneous frequency. There is no contradiction: instantaneous frequency describes the local rate of the combined wave phase, while the frequency spectrum describes a global superposition of constant-frequency components.

For the real signal, negative frequencies must also be accounted for: a cosine at $-f$ equals one at $f$. When $f_c/f_m=20$, the normalized positive-frequency cosine coefficient at $n{f}_m$, $n>0$, is exactly $J_{n-20}(\beta )+J_{-n-20}(\beta )$. The second term is extremely small over the plotted range, but the figure includes it. The chosen complex representation need not have a frequency spectrum supported only at positive frequencies, even when its specified instantaneous frequency is everywhere positive.

For a nonzero FM modulation index, the ideal frequency spectrum has infinitely many sidebands. Many become tiny, but drawing only visible lines does not make the exact signal bandwidth finite. A useful engineering width must state a threshold or a retained-power fraction. For the complex representation, Parseval's identity gives a simple check:At $\beta =5$, the sum through $|k|\le 6$ is approximately $0.99356$. Retaining those complex components captures over $99\%$ of their squared magnitudes and spans $12\mathrm{Hz}$ from $14$ to $26\mathrm{Hz}$. This is a stated truncation criterion, not an exact cutoff or a universal bandwidth rule. It also explains why a diminished carrier component need not imply a diminished envelope: its contribution has been redistributed among sidebands.