TRANSMISSION MEDIA

o Transmission media is a communication channel that carries the information

from the sender to the receiver. Data is transmitted through the
electromagnetic signals.
o The main functionality of the transmission media is to carry the information in
the form of bits through LAN(Local Area Network).
o It is a physical path between transmitter and receiver in data communication.
o The transmission media is available in the lowest layer of the OSI reference
model, i.e., Physical layer.

o GUIDED TRANSMISSION MEDIA

o UNGUIDED TRANSMISSION MEDIA
GUIDED MEDIA
It is defined as the physical medium through which the signals are transmitted. It is
also known as Bounded media.

Types Of Guided media:

Twisted pair:
Twisted pair is a physical media made up of a pair of cables twisted with each other. A
twisted pair cable is cheap as compared to other transmission media. Installation of
the twisted pair cable is easy, and it is a lightweight cable. The frequency range for
twisted pair cable is from 0 to 3.5KHz.

A twisted pair consists of two insulated copper wires arranged in a regular spiral
pattern.

The degree of reduction in noise interference is determined by the number of turns

per foot. Increasing the number of turns per foot decreases noise interference.
Types of Twisted pair:

UNSHIELDED TWISTED PAIR:

An unshielded twisted pair is widely used in telecommunication. These consist of two
insulated copper wires that are coiled around one another. These types of
transmission media block interference without depending on any physical shield
Advantages:
⇢ Least expensive
⇢ Easy to install
⇢ High-speed capacity
Disadvantages:
⇢ Susceptible to external interference
⇢ Lower capacity and performance in comparison to STP
⇢ Short distance transmission due to attenuation
Applications:
Used in telephone connections and LAN networks

SHIELDED TWISTED PAIR

This type of cable consists of a special jacket (a copper braid covering or a foil
shield) to block external interference. It is used in fast-data-rate Ethernet and in
voice and data channels of telephone lines.

Characteristics Of Shielded Twisted Pair:

o The cost of the shielded twisted pair cable is not very high and not very low.
o An installation of STP is easy. It has higher capacity as compared to unshielded
twisted pair cable and provides the higher data transmission rate.

Disadvantages

o It is more expensive as compared to UTP and coaxial cable.

o It has a higher attenuation rate.
Coaxial Cable

It has an outer plastic covering containing an insulation layer made of PVC or Teflon
and 2 parallel conductors each having a separate insulated protection cover.

Coaxial cable is of two types:

1. Baseband transmission: It is defined as the process of transmitting a single

signal at high speed.
2. Broadband transmission: It is defined as the process of transmitting multiple
signals simultaneously.

Advantages Of Coaxial cable:

o The data can be transmitted at high speed.

o It has better shielding as compared to twisted pair cable.
o It provides higher bandwidth.

Disadvantages Of Coaxial cable:

o It is more expensive as compared to twisted pair cable.

o If any fault occurs in the cable causes the failure in the entire network
FIBRE OPTIC
It uses the concept of refraction of light through a core made up of glass or plastic.
The core is surrounded by a less dense glass or plastic covering called the cladding. It
is used for the transmission of large volumes of data.

o Core: The optical fibre consists of a narrow strand of glass or plastic known as
a core. A core is a light transmission area of the fibre. The more the area of the
core, the more light will be transmitted into the fibre.
o Cladding: The concentric layer of glass is known as cladding.
o Jacket: The protective coating consisting of plastic is known as a jacket. The
main purpose of a jacket is to preserve the fibre strength, absorb shock and
extra fibre protection.
Advantages:
 Increased capacity and bandwidth
 Lightweight
 Less signal attenuation
 Immunity to electromagnetic interference

Disadvantages:
 Difficult to install and maintain
 High cost

UNGUIDED TRANSMISSION MEDIA

o An unguided transmission transmits the electromagnetic waves without using
any physical medium. Therefore it is also known as wireless transmission.
o In unguided media, air is the media through which the electromagnetic energy
can flow easily.

RADIO WAVES
o Radio waves are the electromagnetic waves that are transmitted in all the
directions of free space.
o Radio waves are omnidirectional, i.e., the signals are propagated in all the
directions.
o The range in frequencies of radio waves is from 3Khz to 1 khz.
o In the case of radio waves, the sending and receiving antenna are not aligned,
i.e., the wave sent by the sending antenna can be received by any receiving
antenna.
o An example of the radio wave is FM radio.
MICROWAVES

it is a line of sight transmission i.e. the sending and receiving antennas need to be
properly aligned with each other. The distance covered by the signal is directly
proportional to the height of the antenna. Frequency Range:1GHz – 300GHz.
These are majorly used for mobile phone communication and television
distribution.

INFRARED

Infrared waves are used for very short distance communication. They cannot
penetrate through obstacles. This prevents interference between systems.
Frequency Range:300GHz – 400THz. It is used in TV remotes, wireless mouse,
keyboard, printer, etc
Causes Of Transmission Impairment:

o Attenuation: Attenuation means the loss of energy, i.e., the strength of the
signal decreases with increasing the distance which causes the loss of energy.
o Distortion: Distortion occurs when there is a change in the shape of the signal.
This type of distortion is examined from different signals having different
frequencies. Each frequency component has its own propagation speed, so they
reach at a different time which leads to the delay distortion.
o Noise: When data is travelled over a transmission medium, some unwanted
signal is added to it which creates the noise.
Methods of Switching

In order to decide the best route for data transmission, a switching technique is used.
The switching techniques mainly connect the systems in such a way to make one-to-
one communication easier.

Given below are three methods used for switching or we can say there are three
switching techniques:

 Circuit Switching
 Packet Switching
 Message Switching

On the basis of the above-given techniques, switched networks are broadly classified
as follows:
Circuit-Switched Networks
1-A network consists of a set of switches that are connected by the physical
links commonly known as Circuit-Switched Network.
2-Whenever one device communicates with another device then a dedicated
communication path is established between them over the network.
3-There is only a dedicated channel on each link used by each connection. Also,
each link can be easily divided into n channels by using the TDM(Time
Division Multiplexing)or FDM( Frequency Division Multiplexing)technique.
4-The Circuit Switching technique is mainly used in the public telephone
network for voice communication as well as for data communication.
5-Data communication is less efficient than voice communication.
6-The Circuit switching technique mainly takes place at the physical layer.
7-In Circuit-switched networks, the data transfer mode mainly involves a
dedicated end-to-end connection. Until the end of the communication, this
dedicated path is maintained. After the communication is over the link is
released.

Phases in Circuit Switching

In order to transfer data using Circuit switching there is a need to establish a circuit
(these circuits can either be permanent or temporary) so that data transfer can take
place smoothly. Given below are three phases that are used in Circuit Switching for
actual communication:

 Setup Phase
 Data Transfer Phase
 Teardown Phase

1.Setup Phase

It is the first phase of the Circuit switching technique and in this, there is an
establishment of the circuit that simply means a dedicated link is established
between the sender and the receiver with the help of several switching centers or
nodes.
2.Data Transfer Phase

After the establishment of the circuit, the connection is established which means that
data transfer can take place between sender and receiver.

3.Teardown Phase

On the completion of communication between the sender and receiver the circuit
disconnects. In order to disconnect a signal is sent either by the sender or receiver

One of the best examples of Circuit switching is a telephone. Suppose there are two
persons Person A and Person B; they both want to communicate with each other and
located at a distance far from each other.

Person A makes a call to Person B this phase is the setup phase of circuit switching.
After the establishment of the connection and after call pick up by Person B; they
both can communicate with each other. This is the data transfer phase of Circuit
switching

Once the communication is complete one of them can cut the call or break the
connection. This is a teardown phase.

Examples of Circuit Switched Networks

Given below are some examples of Circuit-Switched Networks:

 Public Switched Telephone Network(PSTN)

 Optical Mesh Network
 ISDN B-channel
  Circuit-Switched Data(CSD) and High-speed Circuit-Switched Data(HSCSD)
services in the cellular system like GSM

Advantages of Circuit Switching

Given below are some of the benefits of Circuit Switching:

1.Offers Dedicated Transmission

As there is a dedicated link between the sender and the receiver. Thus Circuit-
Switched network provides a guarantee of dedicated transmission.

2.No Delay in Transmission

There is a dedicated path between sender and receiver thus there are no chances for
the delay.

3. The Circuit Switching technique is best for long transmission because it facilitates a
dedicated link between sender and receiver.

Disadvantages of Circuit Switching

There are some drawbacks of Circuit Switching and these are as follows:

 One of the main disadvantages of Circuit switching is that as there is a

dedicated path between sender and receiver; thus this path is received for
these two particular devices and cannot be used by any other device.
 There is a need for more bandwidth as a dedicated path requires more
bandwidth.
 Utilization of resources is not done properly as resources are allocated to a
connection for the entire duration and thus became unavailable for all other
connections.
 It becomes inefficient in the case if the connection is established between
sender and receiver but there is no data transfer between them.
 Sometimes it takes a long time to establish the connection between sender
and receiver.
 As there is a dedicated path between sender and receiver; thus, this technique
is expensive.
Message-Switched Networks
 The Message-Switching Technique was mainly developed to act
as an alternative to circuit switching, this was before packet
switching was introduced. Basically, the message is a smaller
unit.
 n the Message-Switching technique, the communication between
end users is done by sending and receiving the message, and this
message includes the entire data to be shared.
 In Message-Switching there is no dedicated path between the
sender and receiver like circuit switching.
 The sender and receiver are connected by way of several
intermediate nodes which helps and ensures proper data transfer
between them.
 Message-Switched data networks are also known as hop-by-
hop systems.

Advantages of Message Switching

Given below are some advantages of using Message switching:

 In this Switching, data channels are shared among network devices.

 There is Management of traffic in an efficient way by assigning priorities to the
messages.
 There is an improvement in efficiency as a single channel can now be used for
transferring many messages.
 There is a reduction in network traffic congestion because in this technique we
are using store and forward property and also any switching node can store
the messages till the availability of the network.
 With the use of Message Switching, messages of unlimited size can be sent.
 It requires less bandwidth while broadcasting the messages; thus it consumes
less bandwidth than circuit switching.
 In Message switching, if the next node or link is not available then the current
node stores the message

Disadvantages of Message Switching

There are some drawbacks of using Message Switching and these are as follows:
  For the whole network, message switching requires a large capacity.
 This technique cannot be used for real-time applications because the storing
of messages causes delay.
 The message-switched networks are very slow in nature because the processing takes
place in each and every node and thus it may result in poor performance.

Packet Switching
Packet Switching is a technique of switching in which the message is usually divided into
smaller pieces that are known as packets.

 Every packet contains a header that contains the knowledge of the

destination. With the help of this knowledge/information, these packets find
the route.
 A unique number is given to each packet in order to identify them at the
receiving end.
 One of the biggest examples of the Packet-switched network is the Internet.
 The header of the Packet mainly comprises of two things: header and payload.
o where the header mainly contains the routing information.
o and the payload contains the data that is to be transferred.
 This switching is also based on the store and forward method.
 In the Packet Switched network, there is no resource reservation, and
resources are allocated on demand.
 As we know that each packet contains the information of source and
destination in their headers. Thus all packets can independently travel in the
network.
 Packets related to the same file might take different paths and it mainly
depends upon the availability of the path. These packets will be then re-
assembled at the destination. It is the responsibility of the receiver node to re-
arrange the received packet in order to get the original data.
 The message of acknowledgment will be sent by the receiver if packets reach
the receiver in the correct order.
 In case of a missing packet or corrupted packet, the message will be sent by
the receiver to the sender to resend the message.
wo different approaches used for Packet switching are as follows:

 Datagram Packet Switching

 Virtual Circuit Switching

Let us discuss these two approaches one by one:

Datagram Packet Switching

In Datagram Switching, the packet is commonly known as a datagram. Datagram

Packet switching is also known as Connectionless Packet Switching. In this technique,
each packet routed individually by network devices on the basis of the destination
address that is contained within each packet.

 Each packet is basically treated independently of all others.

 Datagram packet switching is done at the network layer.
 This is Connectionless packet switching because the packet switch does not
keep the information about the connection state.
 In the Datagram packet switching the path is not fixed.
 Routing decisions are taken by the intermediate nodes in order to forward the
packets.
 Thus all datagrams that belong to the same message may travel through
different paths in order to reach their destination.
 On the receiving node, all the packets are reassembled to get the message in
the original form.
 Due to lack of resources packets may also be lost or dropped.
 In most of the protocols, it is the responsibility of the upper-layer protocol to
reorder the datagrams or to ask for the lost datagrams before passing them
on to the application.
Virtual Circuit Switching

Virtual Circuit Switching is also known as Connection-Oriented Switching. This

switching contains the characteristics of circuit switching as well as datagram packet
switching. In this type of packet switching the data-packets are first assembled and
then sequentially numbered. Now they are ready to travel across a predefined route,
sequentially. The information about the address is not required here, because all the
data packets are sent in sequence.

 In addition to the data transfer phase, there are setup and teardown phases.
 The resource allocation is done during the setup phase like it is done in the
circuit-switched network or it can be done on demand like in datagram
networks.
 The data is in the form of packets like the datagram network and also each
packet carries the destination address in the header.
 Like the circuit-switched network, all packets in the Virtual network follows the
same path that is established during the connection.
 This switching is normally implemented in the data link layer.

Advantages of Packet Switching

Given below are some benefits of the Packet Switching:

 More efficient utilization of bandwidth.

 Latency in the transmission is minimum in packet switching.
 This technique is cheaper to implement and thus it is cost-effective.
 The same channel can be used by many users simultaneously.
 As there are improved protocols, thus packet switching is used by many applications
like Skype, WhatsApp, etc.
 The fault tolerance in this technique is more in case of any link down because
packets may follow different paths.
 This technique is more reliable than other techniques because it can easily
detect missing packets.

Disadvantages of Packet Switching

Some of the drawbacks of Packet Switching are as follows:

 This technique cannot be used by those applications that cannot afford more
delays like applications of high-quality voice calls.
 Protocols used in this technique are complex and thus their implementation
cost is high.
 In the case of an overloaded network, the packet may get lost or there might
occur delay which causes the loss of critical information.
 On the receiver's side sorting of the packets sent by the sender is required.