Chapter 01

Discrete Time Signals: Sampling,

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Analog to Digital Conversion
• Most useful signals are analog: Speech, biological signals, seismic signals,
radar signals, sonar signal, audio and video signals etc.
• For processing, conversion of these signals into digital form is necessary.
• The conversion process is called analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion and the
corresponding devices are called A/D converters (ADCs).
• One such method of analog-to digital conversion is Pulse Code
Modulation(PCM).
• A PCM system consists of a transmitter side and a receiver side. The
transmitter side acts as the A/D converters and the receiver side works as
the D/A converters (reconstruction circuit).

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Analog to Digital Conversion
• A block diagram of a PCM system is shown below:

PCM Transmitter

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Analog to Digital Conversion
• The transmitter system has 3 main operations:
1. Sampling
2. Quantization
3. Encoding

• The receiver system has 3 main operations:

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Analog to Digital Conversion
• Sampling: It is the conversion of continuous–time signal to discrete-time
signal by taking “samples” of continuous time signal at discrete instants.
Example:
• Let the signal x(t) be periodically sampled every T seconds. The time, T, is
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called the sampling time, and its reciprocal Fs= is called the sampling
𝑇
rate (or frequency), which basically measures the number of samples per
second.

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Analog to Digital Conversion
• In other words, if we multiply (modulate) the message signal with a train of
pulses, the output will be a discrete time signal.

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Analog to Digital Conversion

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Analog to Digital Conversion
• How often must we sample the signal x(t) in order to be able to reconstruct
an unambiguous replica of it from the samples, x(n). In other words, how
many samples [per second] are necessary to reconstruct x(t)?
• In order to find that out we need to understand the followings:

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Analog to Digital Conversion

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Analog to Digital Conversion

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Analog to Digital Conversion
• To avoid the problem of aliasing, Fs is selected so that Fs >2Fmax atleast.

• Nyquist theorem states ,

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Analog to Digital Conversion
• Understanding aliasing effect:

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Analog to Digital Conversion
• Quantization: It is the conversion of a discrete-time continuous valued
signal into a discrete-time discrete-valued (digital) signal.
• In other words, Quantization refers to the use of a finite set of amplitude
levels and the selection of a level nearest to a particular sample value of the
message signal as the representation for it.
• An example of the quantization operation is provided in the next section
where the range of x(n) is divided into L, non-overlapping zones each of
step size or resolution,Δ.
𝑥max − 𝑥𝑚𝑖𝑛
∆=
𝐿−1
• Xmax=max value of x(n)
• Xmin=min value of x(n)
• Xmax – Xmin = Dynamic range
• L=no of quantization levels

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Analog to Digital Conversion
• The input-output characteristics of an uniform quantizer

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Analog to Digital Conversion
• Table 01: Quantization using Truncation or Rounding

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Analog to Digital Conversion
• Quantization Error/Noise: Quantization noise or Quantization error is
produced in the transmitting end of a PCM system by rounding off the
sampled values of a continuous message signal to the nearest representation
level. The quantization error is the difference between the input and output
signals of the quantizer.

• The quantization error cannot exceed half of the quantization step or

∆ ∆
− ≤ 𝑒𝑞 (𝑛) ≤
2 2

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Analog to Digital Conversion
• Encoding: An encoder in PCM translates the quantized sample into a
specific code by using binary sequence.The binary sequence is converted to
a sequential string of pulses for transmission.
• If we have L levels we need at least L different binary numbers.
• With a word length of b bits we can create 2𝑏 different binary numbers.

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Analog to Digital Conversion
• Example 01:

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Analog to Digital Conversion
• Example 02:

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Analog to Digital Conversion
• Solution:

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