SWE-306

Computer Communication &

Networks (CC&N)

Physical Layer (Data & Signals)

(Week 3 Lecture)
 Why signals?
• Generally the data usable to a person are not in a
form that can be transmitted over a network.
• Even 1s and 0s can not be directly sent over the
network.
• Transmission media work by conducting energy along
a physical path.
• Thus, to be transmitted, data must be transformed to
electromagnetic signals.

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 Analog and Digital
• Analog and digital data
• Analog and digital signals

• Analog
– Analog data refers to information that is continuous
– e.g. sound, video
• Digital
– Digital data refers to information that has discrete states or
discrete values
– e.g. text, integers

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 Analog and Digital Signals
• Data are propagated by means of signals
• Analog
– Have an infinite number of values in a range
• Digital
– Have limited number of defined values

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 Periodic and Aperiodic Signals
• Both analog and digital signals can take one of the two
forms:
• Periodic
– Completes a pattern within a measurable time frame, called
a period.
• Aperiodic
– Changes without exhibiting a pattern that repeats over time.
• In data communication, periodic analog signals and
aperiodic digital signals are commonly used.

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 Periodic Analog Signals
• Periodic analog signals can be classified as
simple or composite.
• A simple periodic analog signal, a sine wave,
cannot be decomposed into simpler signals.
• A composite periodic analog signal is
composed of multiple sine waves.

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 Sine wave
• The most fundamental form of a periodic analog
signal is a sine wave
• It is defined by its amplitude, frequency and phase
• s(t) = A sin(2pft+Φ)

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 Amplitude

• The peak amplitude of a signal represents the

absolute value (in volts) of its highest intensity.
• s(t) = A sin(2pft+Φ)

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 Period and Frequency
• Period (T) = amount of time a signal needs to
complete one cycle. T = 1/f sec
• Frequency (f) = number of periods in one
second. f = 1/T Hz
• s(t) = A sin(2pft+Φ)

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 Phase
• Phase describes the position of the waveform
relative to time zero.
• Measured in degrees or radians.
• s(t) = A sin(2pft+Φ)

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 Sine wave example

• Find out the equation for this wave

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 Sine wave example

• Find out the equation for this wave

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 Time and Frequency domains
• Frequency Domain:
– shows the relationship between amplitude and
frequency
• Time Domain:
– shows the relationship between amplitude and
time

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Time and Frequency domains

• A complete sine wave in the time domain can be

represented by one single spike in the frequency
domain.
• In frequency domain the position of the spike is
frequency and the height is the peak amplitude.

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 Time and Frequency domains

• Three sine waves, each with different amplitude and

frequency; all can be represented by three spikes in
the frequency domain.

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 Composite signals
• If we send single sine wave to convey data, we would
always be sending alternating 1s and 0s.
• A single-frequency sine wave is not useful in data
communications, we need to send a signal made of
many simple sine waves.
• Fourier showed that by adding a set of sine waves of
different frequencies( f ), phases(Φ) and
amplitudes(A), we can have a composite signal

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 Fourier Analysis - Example
• Fourier noticed that you can Figure 1
create some complicated
looking waves by just summing
up sine waves.
• e.g. The wave in fig.1 is sum of
just the following three sine
waves.

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 Fourier Analysis - Example

• Let’s look at the same

wave (fig. 1) in three
dimensions.

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 Spectrum and Bandwidth

• Spectrum
– range of frequencies
contained in signal.

• Bandwidth Spectrum

– the difference
between the highest
and the lowest
frequencies
contained in signal.
Spectrum

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 Harmonic
• It is a frequency that is integer multiple of the
other frequency
– Waves of frequency 2 and 4 Hz are harmonics to a
wave of frequency 1 Hz
– Frequencies 2.4 and 3.6 Hz are harmonics to a
wave of frequency 1.2 Hz

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 Harmonic

• Addition of these three

harmonics does not
form a square have,
but something close.
• To get closer to a
square wave we need
to add more
harmonics.

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 Signals and Media

• A medium may pass some frequencies and may block or

weaken others
• Thus a square wave sent through a medium is received at
the other end in a form which is not square

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 Bandwidth of Medium

• The range of frequencies that a medium can

pass is called its bandwidth of medium
• It is the difference between the highest and
the lowest frequencies that the medium can
satisfactorily pass.

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 Bandwidth - Example

• The figure depicts the range of frequencies a

medium can pass and the relative amplitude of
the frequencies passed

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 Example
If a periodic signal is decomposed into five sine waves
with frequencies of 100, 300, 500, 700, and 900 Hz, what
is the bandwidth? Draw the spectrum, assuming all
components have a maximum amplitude of 10 V.
Solution
B = fh - fl = 900 - 100 = 800 Hz
The spectrum has only five spikes, at 100, 300, 500, 700,
and 900

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 Example
A signal has a bandwidth of 20 Hz. The highest frequency
is 60 Hz. What is the lowest frequency? Draw the
spectrum if the signal contains all integral frequencies of
the same amplitude.

Solution
B = fh - f l
20 = 60 - fl
fl = 60 - 20 = 40 Hz

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 Digital Signals

• Data can be represented by a digital signal e.g. by

encoding 1 as a positive voltage and 0 as zero
voltage

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 Bit interval and Bit rate
• Most digital signals are aperiodic, thus period or frequency
are not the appropriate characteristics to look for
• Bit interval (instead of period) and bit rate (instead of
frequency) are used to describe digital signals
• Bit interval -Time required to send one single bit (sec)
• Bit rate - Number of bits sent per second (bps)

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 Example

A digital signal has a bit rate of 2000 bps. What is

the duration of each bit (bit interval)?

Solution
The bit interval is the inverse of the bit rate.
Bit interval = 1/ 2000 s = 0.000500 s
= 0.000500 x 106 ms = 500 ms

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 Transmission Impairments
• Signal received may differ from signal transmitted i.e.
transmission impairment
• Caused by
– Attenuation
– Distortion
– Noise

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 Attenuation
• Attenuation means loss of energy
• A signal when traveling loses some energy to
overcome the resistance of the medium
• To compensate the losses, amplifiers are used

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 Decibel
• The Decibel (dB) measures the relative strengths
of signals at two different points
– -ve dB = attenuation
– +ve dB = amplification
• dB = 10 log10 (P2/P1)

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 Example
Imagine a signal travels through a transmission
medium and its power is reduced to half. This means
that P2 = ½ P1. In this case, the attenuation (loss of
power) can be calculated as:

Solution
10 log10 (P2/P1) = 10 log10 (0.5P1/P1) = 10 log10 (0.5)
= 10(–0.3) = –3 dB

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 Example
Imagine a signal travels through an amplifier and its
power is increased ten times. This means that
P2 = 10 x P1. In this case, the amplification (gain of
power) can be calculated as

Solution
10 log10 (P2/P1) = 10 log10 (10P1/P1)
= 10 log10 (10) = 10 (1) = 10 dB

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 Distortion

• The change of a signal’s form or shape is distortion

• A composite signal is made up of different frequencies
each with its own propagation speed.
• Different delays in arriving may create a difference in
phase that causes distortion.

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 Noise
• Several types of noise, such as thermal noise,
induced noise, crosstalk, and impulse noise,
may corrupt the signal.
• Thermal noise is the random motion of
electrons in a wire which creates an extra
signal not originally sent by the transmitter.

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 Noise

• Induced noise comes from sources such as motors and

appliances, these devices act as a sending antenna, and
the transmission medium acts as the receiving antenna.
• Crosstalk is the effect of one wire on the other; one wire
acts as a sending antenna and the other as the receiving
antenna.
• Impulse noise is a spike (a signal with high energy in a
very short time) that comes from power lines, lightning,
etc.

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 Other Concepts
• Bandwidth

• Throughput

• Propagation Speed

• Propagation Time

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 Bandwidth
• In networking, we use the term bandwidth in
two contexts.
– The first, bandwidth in hertz, refers to the range of
frequencies in a composite signal or the range of
frequencies that a channel can pass.
– The second, bandwidth in bits per second, refers
to the speed of bit transmission in a channel or
link.

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 SNR, Bandwidth, Data Rate
• The fundamental parameters that control the rate and
quality of information transmission are the channel
bandwidth and the signal power S.
• Role of BW, If we want to increase the speed of
information transmission by time compression of the
signal lets say by a factor of 2 and the signal is
transmitted in halftime.
• So, frequencies and channel BW must also be doubled.
• Thus the rate of information transmission is directly
proportional to channel BW.
 SNR, Bandwidth, Data Rate…
• The signal power S plays a dual role in information
transmission. Increase S reduced the effect of channel noise
and we received accurate data.
• Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) means, the higher (strength) the
value of the signal, compare to Noise, the quality of the
signal would be better over a longer distance.
SIGNAL TO NOISE RATIO

The power of a signal is 10 mW and the power of the noise is 1 μW; what are the
values of SNR and SNRdB ?

Solution
The values of SNR and SNRdB can be calculated as follows:

The values of SNR and SNRdB for a noiseless channel are

We can never achieve this ratio in real life; it is an ideal.

3.42
 DATA RATE LIMITS

A very important consideration in data communications is how

fast we can send data, in bits per second, over a channel.
Data rate depends on three factors:
1. The bandwidth available
2. The level of the signals we use
3. The quality of the channel (the level of noise)

We consider two laws

1. Nyquist Law Increasing the

2. Shannon Law levels of a signal
may reduce the
reliability of the
system.
3.43
 Nyquist Law And Shannon Law
The Nyquist bit rate
Nyquist Law : C  2  B  Log 2 L formula defines the
theoretical maximum bit
Shannon’s Law : C  B  Log 2 SNR  1 rate for noiseless channel:
Where C= Data rate of the channel
B= Bandwidth of the signal
And L= Number of levels in the signal

The Shannon capacity gives us the upper limit; the

Nyquist formula tells us how many signal levels we need.

•For Noiseless Channel:

•We use Nyquist Bit Rate
•For Noisy Channel:
•We use Shannon Capacity
•We also can use Both Limits 44
 Shannon’s Theorem
• The limitation imposed on communication by the channel
bandwidth BW and the SNR is highlighted by Shannon’s
equation:-
• C  B log (1  SNR)
2

• Where ‘C’ is the channel capacity in bits per second. This is

the max. number of bits that can be transmitted per second
with a probability of error close to zero.
• In Shannon formula there is no indication of the signal level.
• Indicates that no matter how many levels we have, we cannot
achieve a data rate higher than the capacity of the channel.
• In other words, the formula defines a characteristic of the
channel, not the method of transmission.
Nyquist Law Examples
1.Consider a noiseless channel with a bandwidth of 3000 Hz transmitting a signal
with two signal levels. The maximum bit rate can be calculated as

2.Consider the same noiseless channel transmitting a signal with four signal levels
(for each level, we send 2 bits). The maximum bit rate can be calculated as

3.We need to send 265 kbps over a noiseless channel with a bandwidth of 20 kHz.
How many signal levels do we need?
using Nyquist formula as shown:

Since this result is not a power of 2, we need to either increase the number of
levels or reduce the bit rate. If we have 128 levels, the bit rate is 280 kbps. If we
have 64 levels, the bit rate is 240 kbps.
3.46
Shannon’s Law Examples

1.Consider an extremely noisy channel in which the value of the signal-to-noise

ratio is almost zero. In other words, the noise is so strong that the signal is faint.
For this channel the capacity C is calculated as

This means that the capacity of this channel is zero regardless of the bandwidth.
In other words, we cannot receive any data through this channel.

2.We can calculate the theoretical highest bit rate of a regular telephone line. A
telephone line normally has a bandwidth of 3000. The signal-to-noise ratio is
usually 3162. For this channel the capacity is calculated as

This means that the highest bit rate for a telephone line is 34.860 kbps. If we want
to send data faster than this, we can either increase the bandwidth of the line or
improve the signal-to-noise ratio.
3.47
Shannon’s Law Examples
3.The signal-to-noise ratio is often given in decibels. Assume that SNRdB = 36 and
the channel bandwidth is 2 MHz. The theoretical channel capacity can be
calculated as

4.For practical purposes, when the SNR is very high, we can assume that SNR +
1 is almost the same as SNR. In these cases, the theoretical channel capacity can
be simplified to

For example, we can calculate the theoretical capacity of the previous example as

3.48
 Example

We have a channel with a 1-MHz bandwidth. The SNR for this channel is 63. What
are the appropriate bit rate and signal level?

Solution
First, we use the Shannon formula to find the upper limit.

The Shannon formula gives us 6 Mbps, the upper limit. For better performance we
choose something lower, 4 Mbps, for example. Then we use the Nyquist formula
to find the number of signal levels.

3.49
 Throughput
• It is the measure of how fast data can pass
through an entity.

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 Example
A network with bandwidth of 10 Mbps can pass
only an average of 12,000 frames per minute with
each frame carrying an average of 10,000 bits. What
is the throughput of this network?

Solution
We can calculate the throughput as

The throughput is almost one-fifth of the bandwidth in this case.

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 Propagation Speed
• It measures the distance a signal or a bit can
travel through a medium in one second.
• Depends on the medium and the frequency of
the signal.

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 Propagation Time

• It measures the time required for a signal (or bit)

to travel from one point to another.
• Propagation time = Distance / Propagation speed

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 Example
What is the propagation time if the distance between
the two points is 12,000 km? Assume the propagation
speed to be 2.4 × 108 m/s in cable.

Solution
We can calculate the propagation time as

The example shows that a bit can go over the Atlantic Ocean in
only 50 ms if there is a direct cable between the source and the
destination.
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 Latency (Delay)

• The latency or delay defines how long it takes for

an entire message to completely arrive at the
destination from the time the first bit is sent out
from the source.
• We can say that latency is made of four
components:
Latency = propagation time + transmission time
+ queuing time + processing delay

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 Queuing Time
• The time needed for each intermediate or end
device to hold the message before it can be
processed.
• The queuing time is not a fixed factor; it
changes with the load imposed on the
network.

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