What is I and Q in signals?
By convention, the cosine wave is in-phase component and the sine wave is the quadrature component. The capital letter I represents the amplitude of the in-phase signal, and the capital letter Q represents the amplitude of the quadrature signal.
How does IQ modulation work?
An IQ modulator is a device that converts baseband information into RF signals. Internally, two double-balanced mixers are combined as shown below. By modulating with both in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) inputs, any arbitrary output amplitude and phase can be selected.