Modulators And Drivers

[ppppenguin]

I didn't know till recently the sidebands in AM increase power in the carrier.

Really? In simple AM the carrier power is constant. The sidebands represent additional power. In practice AM broadcasters do everything they can to dynamically reduce the carrier power because it costs a lot of electricity (=money) to generate it. The limits to carrier power reduction are set by the need for ordinary AM receivers to be able to demodulate the signal without too much distortion.

If you can do without a carrier you've got double sideband suppressed carrier. Eliminate one of the sidebands too and you have SSB. Both need more complex receivers but make much better use of the transmitter power.