Which statement best describes single-sideband (SSB) modulation and its main advantage?

• A. Lower noise figure
• B. Single-sideband with one sideband and carrier suppressed; provides significant bandwidth efficiency
• C. Analog to digital conversion
• D. Double-sideband with full carrier

Answer: (B)

Single-sideband modulation reduces the spectrum by sending only one of the two sidebands and suppressing the carrier. In standard AM you have both sidebands plus a carrier, which uses more bandwidth and wastes transmitter power on the unneeded carrier. By keeping just one sideband and removing the carrier, the signal occupies far less spectrum—roughly the width of a single sideband—and the transmitter power is used more efficiently because there’s no carrier to radiate or energy in the unused sideband.

That bandwidth efficiency is the main advantage: you can fit more conversations into the same slice of spectrum and enjoy better efficiency for long-range or crowded-band operation. Keep in mind that receivers for this mode are more complex because they must recover the suppressed carrier information, but the payoff in spectral efficiency is the key takeaway. The other options don’t describe SSB: they either refer to unrelated concepts, or to a mode that isn’t how SSB is implemented.