 Data and Signals

CHAPTER 2  Periodic Analog signals

 Digital Signals

PHYSICAL LAYER  Transmission Impairment

 Data Rate
 limits, Performance.
 THE PHYSICAL LAYER
• One of the major functions of the physical layer is to transmit data in
the form of signals like wheather you are sending the photo or any
file you need to send it in signal format.
• Generally, the data usable to a person or application are not in a
form that can be transmitted over a network.
• For example, a photograph must first be changed to a form that
transmission media can accept.
• Transmission media work by conducting energy along a physical
path.
• For transmission, data needs to be changed to signals.
 DATA AND SIGNALS
Figure 3.1 shows a scenario in which a scientist working in a research company, Sky Research, needs to
order a book related to her research from an online bookseller, Scientific Books.
• We can think of five different levels of communication between Alice, the computer on which our scientist is
working, and Bob, the computer that provides online service.
• Communication at application, transport, network, or data-link is logical; communication at the physical
layer is physical.
• For simplicity, we have shown only host-to-router, router-to-router, and router-to-host, but the switches are
also involved in the physical communication.
• Although Alice and Bob need to exchange data, communication at the physical layer means exchanging
signals.
• Data need to be transmitted and received, but the media have to change data to signals.
• Both data and the signals that represent them can be either analog or digital in form.
 ANALOG AND DIGITAL DATA
• Data can be analog or digital. The term analog data refers to information that is continuous;
• digital data refers to information that has discrete states.
• For example, an analog clock that has hour, minute, and second hands gives information in
a continuous form;
• the movements of the hands are continuous.
• On the other hand, a digital clock that reports the hours and the minutes will change
suddenly from 8:05 to 8:06.
• Analog data, such as the sounds made by a human voice, take on continuous values.
• When someone speaks, an analog wave is created in the air.
• Digital data take on discrete values.
• For example, data are stored in computer memory in the form of 0s and 1s.
 ANALOG AND DIGITAL SIGNALS
• Analog signals are continuous waves that vary in amplitude and frequency, while digital
signals are discrete values that represent binary bits of 0 or 1.
• As the waves travel from A to B it will have lot of changes in its intensity and frequency but
digital signals will be fixed values.
• The simplest way to show signals is by plotting them on a pair of perpendicular axes.
• The vertical axis represents the value or strength of a signal.
• The horizontal axis represents time.
• Figure 3.2 illustrates an analog signal and a digital signal.
• The curve representing the analog signal passes through an infinite number of points.
• The vertical lines of the digital signal, however, demonstrate the sudden jump that the signal
makes from value to value
 PERIODIC AND NONPERIODIC
• Periodic signals are signals that repeat themselves over a regular period of time and they
have a pattern and measurable time frame called period.
• Periodic signals can be analog or digital and non periodic signals donot change over a
regular period of time.
 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
• A sine wave can be represented by three parameters: the peak amplitude, the frequency, and
the phase. These three parameters fully describe a sine wave
 SINE WAVE
• The sine wave is the most fundamental form of a periodic analog signal
• When we visualize it as a simple oscillating curve, its change over the course of a cycle is
smooth and consistent, a continuous, rolling flow.
Peak Amplitude:The peak amplitude of a signal is the absolute value of its highest intensity,
proportional to the energy it carries. For electric signals, peak amplitude is normally
measured in volts
• Period and Frequency:Period refers to the amount of time, in seconds, a signal needs to
complete 1 cycle. Frequency refers to the number of periods in 1 s. Note that period and
frequency are just one characteristic defined in two ways. Period is the inverse of frequency,
and frequency is the inverse of period, as the following formulas show.
TWO SIGNALS WITH THE SAME AMPLITUDE
AND PHASE, BUT DIFFERENT FREQUENCIES
The power we use at home has a frequency of 60 Hz (50 Hz in Europe). The period of this sine
wave can be determined as follows:
 PHASE
• The term phase, or phase shift, describes the position of the waveform relative to time 0.
• If we think of the wave as something that can be shifted backward or forward along the time
axis, phase describes the amount of that shift.
Wavelength:Wavelength is another characteristic of a signal traveling through a transmission
medium.
 DIGITAL SIGNALS
• Information as represented by analog signals can be also represented by digital signals.
• Digital signals as we all know have two values 0 and 1 where 0 is known as low voltage and
1 is known as high voltage
• In the previous diagram there are two signals one with two signal level and another with 4 signal level
• First diagram you can see 8 bits and 8 bits sent to 1 signal means its 8bps(bits per second)
• Here 1 is represented for high level and 0 is represented for low level
• In the second diagram two bits are grouped 11 means level 4,10 means it will come in level 3 01 will
come in level 2 and 00 will be in level 1
• Two bits will have different combinations so 4 different levels will come.
 BIT RATE
• The bit rate is the number of bits sent in 1s, expressed in bits per second (bps)

A page is an average of 24 lines with 80 characters in each line. If we assume that one character requires 8
bits, the bit rate is
Solution A page is an average of 24 lines with 80 characters in each line. If we assume that one character
requires 8 bits, the bit rate is
100*24*80*8 =1,536,000 bps =1.536 Mbps
 DIGITAL SIGNAL AS A COMPOSITE ANALOG
SIGNAL
• In Composite signal there will be more than one periodic analog signal and here multiple
analog signals make up a composite signal.
 TRANSMISSION IMPAIRMENT
• Transmission impairment means that signals travels through transmission medium which is
not proper means that signal when it goes at start is not same when it reaches the end.
• Different impairments that occur are distortion, attenuation and noise.
 ATTENUATION
• Attenuation means loss of energy when signals transmits through a transmission medium.
• When any signal simple or composite travels across a transmission medium it will get
transferred to heat when overcoming resistance of the medium.
• Some of electric signals that is going in transmission medium will be converted to heat and
to reduce this amplifiers are used.
• Decibel: To show that a signal has lost or gained strength, engineers use the unit of the
decibel.
• The decibel (dB) measures the relative strengths of two signals or one signal at two different
points.
• Note that the decibel is negative if a signal is attenuated and positive if a signal is amplified.
• Variables P1 and P2 are powers of the signals at points P1 and P2 respectively and in some
cases power is defined in terms of voltage.
• the formula is dB = 20 log10 (V2/V1)
 EXAMPLE
Suppose a signal travels through a transmission medium and its power is reduced to one-half.
This means that P2 = P1. In this case, the attenuation (loss of power) can be calculated as
A signal travels through an amplifier, and its power is increased 10 times. This means that P2
= 10P1. In this case, the amplification (gain of power) can be calculated as
 DISTORTION
• Distortion means the signal will change its form or shape and distortion will occur in
composite signal made of different frequencies.
• Difference in signal will create difference in phase and each phase at receiving side have
different frequencies.
 NOISE
• Generally Noise is something which causes disturbance to someone or undesired sound.
• Noise is another cause of impairment and different types of noises are thermal noise,
induced noise, cross talk etc.
• Thermal noise are extra signals travelling in wire which is not generated by transmitter.
• Crosstalk Is the effect of one wire over another and here one wire acts as sending antennae
and another wire acts as receiving antennae.
• Impulse noise is a lightning that comes from power lines.
 The signal-to-noise ratio is defined as

SNR= average signal power

average noise power

SNR is actually the ratio of what is wanted (signal) to what is not wanted (noise). A high SNR means the signal is
less corrupted by noise; a low SNR means the signal is more corrupted by noise.
 EXAMPLE
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?
 DATA RATE LIMITS
• A Important thing in data communications is that how fast we can send data over a
communication channel in bits per second.
• Data rate depends on 3 factors
1. The bandwidth available
2. The level of the signals we use
3. The quality of the channel (the level of noise)
 NOISELESS CHANNEL
• Noiseless channel is a channel that can transmit data perfectly without any noise or
distortion.
• Nyquist bit data is the maximum data rate that can be achieved on the given channel.
The formula for Nyquist bit rate is:
Bitrate=2×Bandwidth×log2​(L)

In this formula, bandwidth is the bandwidth of the channel, L is the number of signal levels
used to represent data, and Bitrate is the bit rate in bits per second.
• Although the idea is theoretically correct, practically there is a limit.
• When we increase the number of signal levels, we impose a burden on the receiver.
• If the number of levels in a signal is just 2, the receiver can easily distinguish between a 0
and a 1.
• If the level of a signal is 64, the receiver must be very sophisticated to distinguish between
64 different levels.
• In other words, increasing the levels of a signal reduces the reliability of the system.
 EXAMPLE
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
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
 NOISY CHANNEL: SHANNON CAPACITY
• Actually in reality we cannot have a channel without noise and in 1944 Claude Shannon
introduced a formula called Shannon capacity to determine highest data rate for noisy
channel
• In this formula, bandwidth is the bandwidth of the channel, SNR is the signal-to noise ratio,
and capacity is the capacity of the channel in bits per second
 EXAMPLE

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
 EXAMPLE

We can calculate the theoretical highest bit rate of a regular telephone line. A telephone
line normally has a bandwidth of 3000 Hz (300 to 3300 Hz) assigned for data
communications. The signal-to-noise ratio is usually 3162. For this channel the capacity
is calculated as
 PERFORMANCE
• One important issue in network is performance of the network.

Bandwidth:One characteristic that measures network performance is bandwidth. However, the

term can be used in two different contexts with two different measuring values: bandwidth in
hertz and bandwidth in bits per second

Bandwidth in Hertz:Bandwidth in hertz is the range of frequencies contained in a composite

signal or the range of frequencies a channel can pass. For example, we can say the bandwidth
of a subscriber telephone line is 4 kH
Bandwidth in Bits per Seconds: The term bandwidth can also refer to the number of bits per
second that a channel, a link, or even a network can transmit. For example, one can say the
bandwidth of a Fast Ethernet network (or the links in this network) is a maximum of 100
Mbps. This means that this network can send 100 Mbps.

Throughput:The throughput is a measure of how fast we can actually send data through a
network.
Imagine a highway designed to transmit 1000 cars per minute from one point to another.
However, if there is congestion on the road, this figure may be reduced to 100 cars per minute.
The bandwidth is 1000 cars per minute; the throughput is 100 cars per minute
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.

Latency =propagation time +transmission time + queuing time + processing delay

• Propagation Time: Propagation time measures the time required for a bit to travel from the
source to the destination. The propagation time is calculated by dividing the distance by the
propagation speed.

Propagation time = Distance / (Propagation Speed)

Queuing Time:The third component in latency is the 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.
 BANDWIDTH-DELAY PRODUCT
Case 1
Let us assume that we have a link with a bandwidth of 1 bps (unrealistic, but good for
demonstration purposes). We also assume that the delay of the link is 5 s (also unrealistic). We
want to see what the bandwidth-delay product means in this case. Looking at the figure, we
can say that this product 1 × 5 is the maximum number of bits that can fill the link. There can
be no more than 5 bits at any time on the link.
Case 2

Now assume we have a bandwidth of 5 bps. Figure 3.33 shows that there can be maximum 5 ×
5 = 25 bits on the line. The reason is that, at each second, there are 5 bits on the line;
 JITTER
Jitter is the variation in the interval between successive data packets in a network. It can affect
the quality of real-time applications, such as video conferencing, VoIP calls, live streaming,
and online gaming.
END OF CHAPTER 2