Telecommunication Networks (ECEg-5311)

Chapter Two
Digital Telecommunication Transmission Principles
Outline
▪ Introduction
▪ Digital Representation of Information
▪ Digital Processing of Analog Signals
▪ Line Coding
▪ Digital Modulation Techniques
▪ Digital Hierarchy Technologies

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 Introduction

Fig. 1: Basics of a communication system. 3

 Introduction …
▪ A transmission system makes use of a physical transmission
medium or channel that allows the propagation of energy in the
form of pulses or variations in voltage, current or light intensity.
▪ In analog communications, the objective is to transmit a
waveform which is a function that varies continuously with
time.
▪ This function of time must be reproduced exactly at the output
of the analog communication system.
▪ In practice, communication channels do not satisfy this
condition, so some degree of distortion is unavoidable.

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 Introduction …
▪ In digital transmission, the objective is to transmit a given
symbol that is selected from some finite set of possibilities.
▪ Specifically, in binary digital transmission the objective is to
transmit either a 0 or 1.
▪ This can be done by transmitting positive voltages for a certain
period of time to convey 1 and a negative voltage to convey 0.
▪ The task of the receiver is to determine the input symbol with
high probability.
▪ The system will operate correctly as long as the receiver can
determine whether the original voltage was positive or negative.

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 Digital Representation of Information

Fig. 2: Block diagram of digital transceiver.

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 Digital Representation of Information …
▪ Networks are driven by the applications they support and must
therefore be designed to accommodate the requirements
imposed by the information types in the applications.
▪ These information types include text, speech, audio, data,
images and video.
▪ These information types can be classified into two broad
categories.
i. Block information:
✓ include files that contain text, numerical or graphical information
✓ can range from a few bytes to hundreds of kilobytes
✓ data compression is performed to reduce the file size

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 Example: Data Compression
▪ An individual color image produces a huge number of bits .
▪ A pixel is defined as a single dot in a digitized information.
▪ For example, an 8x10-inch picture scanned at a resolution of
400x400-pixels per square inch yields 400x400x8x10=12.8
Megapixels.
▪ A color image is decomposed into red, green and blue sub-
images.
▪ Normally eight bits are used to represent each of the red, green
and blue color components resulting in 12.8 Megapixels x 3
bytes/pixel=38.4 Megabytes .

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 Example: Data Compression …
▪ At a speed of 28.8 kbps, this image would require about 3 hours
to transmit!
▪ Clearly, data compression methods are required to reduce the
transmission time.
▪ Some of the data compression standards include:
✓ The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF)
✓ The Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG)

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 Digital Representation of Information ...

Table: Block-oriented Information

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 Digital Representation of Information …
ii. Stream information:
✓ information that is produced continuously by the source
✓ include active music, voice and video information
✓ require relatively high file size compared to block information

▪ The voice signal in telephone systems is sampled at a rate of

8000samples/second.
▪ Each sample is then represented by 8 bits resulting in a bit rate
of 8000samples/sec x 8 bits/sample=64 kbps.
▪ Music signals vary much more rapidly than voice signals.
▪ Audio compact disc (CD) systems sample the music signals at
44000 samples/second at a resolution of 16 bits.
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 Digital Representation of Information …
▪ For a stereo music system, the resulting bit rate is 44,000
samples/second x 16 bits/sample x 2 channel=1.4 Megabits/sec.
▪ One hour of music will then produce 317 Mbytes of
information.
▪ The sub-band coding technique used in the MPEG audio
standard can reduce this bit rate to 14 kbps to about 100 kbps.
▪ Video signals can be viewed as a succession of pictures that is
fast enough to give the human eye the appearance continuous
motion.
▪ Typical videoconferencing systems operate with frames of 176
x 144 pixels at 10 to 36 frames/second.
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 Digital Representation of Information …
▪ Broadcast television requires greater resolution than
videoconferencing, i.e., 720 x 480 pixels/frame, and can contain
a high degree of motion.
▪ The MPEG-2 coding system can achieve a reduction from the
uncompressed bit rate of 249 Mbps to the range of 2 to 6 Mbps.
▪ The recently approved high-definition television system
operates with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels/frame and 30
frames/second.
▪ The uncompressed bit rate is 1.6 Gigabits/second.
▪ The MPEG-2 coding can reduce this to 19 to 38 Mbps which
can be supported by digital transmission systems.
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 Digital Representation of Information …
▪ The video image pixel rates for different systems is shown
below.

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Digital Representation of Information …

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 Digital Processing of Analog Signals

▪ Most real-world signals are analog in nature.

✓ They are continuous in time and amplitude
✓ They are converted to voltage or current signals using sensors and
transducers

▪ The voltage or current signals are then converted into digital

signals for digital transmission.
✓ Sampling -> quantization -> coding

▪ Finally, the analog signals must be reconstructed at the receiver.

✓ Reconstruction or digital-to-analog conversion

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 Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)
▪ PCM consists of three steps to digitize an analog signal:
1. Sampling
2. Quantization
3. Binary Encoding
▪ Before we sample, we have to filter the signal to limit the
maximum frequency of the signal as it affects the sampling rate.
▪ Filtering should ensure that we do not distort the signal, i.e.,
remove high frequency components that affect the signal shape.

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 Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) …
➢ The Analog-to-digital Converter (ADC)
performs three functions:
Analog
Input – Sampling
Signal • Makes the signal discrete in time.
• If the analog input has a bandwidth
Sample of W Hz, then the minimum sample
frequency such that the signal can be
reconstructed without distortion.
ADC
Quantize – Quantization
111 • Makes the signal discrete in
110
101 amplitude.
100
011
010
• Round off to one of q discrete levels.
Encode
– Encode
001
000

• Maps the quantized values to digital

words that are n bits long.
Digital Output
Signal
111 111 001 010 011 111 011
 Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) ...

Fig. Components of PCM Encoder

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 Sampling
▪ Analog signal is sampled at every Ts seconds.
▪ Ts is referred to as the sampling interval (sampling period).
▪ fs = 1/Ts is called the sampling rate or sampling frequency.
▪ There are 3 sampling methods:
i. Ideal - an impulse at each sampling instant
ii. Natural - a pulse of short width with varying amplitude
iii. Flattop - sample and hold, like natural but with single
amplitude value
▪ The process is referred to as pulse amplitude modulation PAM
and the outcome is a signal with analog (non integer) values.
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 Sampling …

Fig. Three different sampling methods for PCM

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 Sampling …
▪ According to the Nyquist theorem, the sampling rate must be at
least 2 times the highest frequency contained in the signal.

Fig. Nyquist sampling rate for lowpass and bandpass signals

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 Quantization

▪ Sampling results in a series of pulses of varying amplitude

values ranging between two limits: min and max.
▪ The amplitude values are infinite between the two limits.
▪ We need to map the infinite amplitude values onto a finite set
of known values.
▪ This is achieved by dividing the distance between min and max
into L zones, each of height 
max − min 2 A
= =
L L
where A is the peak amplitudeof the message signal,
i.e., [- A, A]
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 Quantization Levels
▪ The midpoint of each zone is assigned a value from 0 to L-1
(resulting in L values)
▪ Each sample falling in a zone is then approximated to the value
of the midpoint.
▪ Assume we have a voltage signal with amplitudes Vmin=-20V
and Vmax=+20V.
▪ We want to use L=8 quantization levels.
▪ Zone width  = [20 -(-20]/8 = 5
▪ The 8 zones are: -20 to -15, -15 to -10, -10 to -5, -5 to 0, 0 to
+5, +5 to +10, +10 to +15, +15 to +20
▪ The midpoints are: -17.5, -12.5, -7.5, -2.5, 2.5, 7.5, 12.5, 17.5
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 Quantizing Error
▪ The difference between the input and output signals of the
quantizer is known as the quantizing error or quantizing noise.
▪ It is apparent that with a random input signal, the quantizing
error qe varies randomly in the interval:

− 
 qe 
2 2

▪ Assuming that the error is likely to lie anywhere in the range

(-Δ/2, Δ/2), the mean-square quantizing error is given by:

1 /2 2 2 A2
E (qe ) =  qe dqe = = 2
2

  / 2 12 3L

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 Output Signal to Quantizing Noise Ratio
▪ The output signal-to-quantizing-noise ratio in a PCM system is
defined as the ratio of average signal power to average
quantizing noise power.
▪ For a full-scale sinusoidal message signal with amplitude A, the
average signal and quantizing noise powers are given by:
A2 2 A2
S= and N q = E (qe ) = = 2
2

2 12 3L

▪ The output signal-to-quantizing-noise ratio of a PCM system is

then given by:
 S  A 2
/2 3 2  S 
( SNR ) o =   = 2 = L  ( SNR ) o ,dB =   = 1.76 + 20 log L
N  2  
 q  o A /(3L ) 2  N q  o ,dB
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 Encoding
▪ After quantization, each zone is then assigned a binary code.
▪ The number of bits required to encode the zones, or the number
of bits per sample as it is commonly referred to, is obtained as
follows:
nb = log 2
L

▪ For the given example, nb = 3

▪ The 8 zone (or level) codes are therefore: 000, 001, 010, 011,
100, 101, 110, and 111
▪ Assigning codes to zones:
✓ 000 will refer to zone -20 to -15, 001 to zone -15 to -10, etc….

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 Encoding…

Fig. Quantization and encoding of a sampled signal

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 Bit Rate and Bandwidth Requirements of PCM

▪ The bit rate of a PCM signal can be calculated by multiplying

the number of bits per sample and the sampling rate, i.e.,
Bit Rate = nb x f s
▪ The bandwidth required to transmit this signal depends on the
type of line encoding used.
▪ A digitized signal will always need more bandwidth than the
original analog signal.
▪ Thus, higher bandwidth is the price we pay for robustness and
other features of digital transmission.

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 PCM Decoder

▪ To recover an analog signal from a digitized signal we follow

the following steps:
✓ We use a hold circuit that holds the amplitude value of a pulse till
the next pulse arrives.
✓ We pass this signal through a low pass filter with a cutoff
frequency that is equal to the highest frequency in the pre-sampled
signal.

▪ The higher the value of L, the less distorted a signal is

recovered.

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 PCM Decoder …

Fig. PCM decoder components

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 Delta Modulation

▪ This scheme sends only the difference between pulses, if the

pulse at time tn+1 is higher in amplitude value than the pulse at
time tn, then a single bit, say a “1”, is used to indicate the
positive value.
▪ If the pulse is lower in value, resulting in a negative value, a
“0” is used.
▪ This scheme works well for small changes in signal values
between samples.
▪ If changes in amplitude are large, this will result in large
errors.
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 Delta Modulation …

Fig. The process of delta modulation

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 Delta Modulation …

Fig. Delta modulation components

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 Delta Modulation …

Fig. Delta demodulation components

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 Examples on PCM
Example-1:

Find the Nyquist rate and Nyquist interval of an analog signal

given by:
x(t ) = 5 cos1000t cos 4000t

Solution:
x(t ) = 5 cos1000t cos 4000t  x(t ) = 2.5[cos 3000t + cos 5000t ]
5000
 fm = = 2500 Hz = 2.5kHz
2
1 1
 f s = 2 f m = 2(2500) = 5000 Hz and Ts = = = 0.2ms
f s 5000
 The Nyquist rate is 5kHz and the Nyquist interval is 0.2ms
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 Examples on PCM …
Example-2:

A binary channel with bit rate 36kbps is available for PCM

voice transmission. Find appropriate values of the sampling
rate fs, the quantizing level L and the binary digits nb assuming
fm=3.2kHz.

Solution:

f s  2 f m = 6400 and nb f s  Rb = 36000 , where Rb : channel bit rate

Rb 36000
 nb   = 5.6
fs 6400
 nb = 5, L = 25 = 32
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 Examples on PCM …
Example-3:

In a binary PCM system, the output signal-to-quantizing-noise

ratio is to be held to a minimum of 40dB. Determine the
number of required levels and the corresponding output signal-
to-quantizing noise ratio.

Solution:

In a binanry PCM system, L = 2 n , n is the number of binary digits

 S 
  = 1.76 + 20 log 2 n = 1.76 + 6.02n dB
N 
 q  o.dB
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 Examples on PCM …
Solution:
 S   S 
  = 40dB    = 10,000
N  N 
 q  o , dB  q o

2  S

 20,000
L = = = 81.6  82
3  N q

o 3
The number of binary digits n is :
n = log 2 = 6.36  7
82

The number of levels required is L = 2 7 = 128.

The corresponding output signal - to - quantizing - noise ratio is :
 S 
  = 1.76 + 6.02 * 7 = 43.9dB
N 
 q  o , dB
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