Analog modulation involves representing analog information as an analog signal. It is needed when the transmission medium is bandpass in nature or only a bandpass channel is available. There are three main types of analog modulation: amplitude modulation (AM), which changes the amplitude of the carrier signal; frequency modulation (FM), which changes the frequency; and phase modulation (PM), which changes the phase. AM encodes the modulating signal as variations in the envelope of the carrier signal. This results in a spectrum with the carrier frequency flanked by upper and lower sidebands. The bandwidth required is twice that of the modulating signal.