Chapter 4

Digital data communication system

 Encoding
• Digital data, digital signals: The simplest form of digital encoding of digital data is to
assign one voltage level to binary one and another to binary zero. More complex
encoding schemes are used to improve performance, by altering the spectrum of the
signal and providing synchronization capability.
• Digital data, analog signal: A modem converts digital data to an analog signal so that
it can be transmitted over an analog line. The basic techniques are amplitude shift
keying (ASK), frequency shift keying (FSK), and phase shift keying (PSK).All involve
altering one or more characteristics of a carrier frequency to represent binary data.
• Analog data, digital signals: Analog data, such as voice and video, are often digitized
to be able to use digital transmission facilities. The simplest technique is pulse code
modulation (PCM), which involves sampling the analog data periodically and
quantizing the samples.
• Analog data, analog signals: Analog data are modulated by a carrier frequency to
produce an analog signal in a different frequency band, which can be utilized on an
analog transmission system. The basic techniques are amplitude modulation (AM),
frequency modulation (FM), and phase modulation (PM).
Encoding
 Encoding techniques
• Nonreturn to Zero-Level (NRZ-L)
• Nonreturn to Zero Inverted (NRZI)
• Bipolar-AMI
• Pseudoternary
• Manchester
• Differential Manchester
 Non-Return to Zero (NRZ)
• The most common, and easiest, way to transmit digital signals
is to use two different voltage levels for the two binary digits.
• Codes that follow this strategy share the property that the
voltage level is constant during a bit interval; there is no
transition (no return to a zero voltage level).
– For example, the absence of voltage can be used to represent binary
0, with a constant positive voltage used to represent binary 1.

• There are two types

– Non-return to zero –Level
– Non-return to zero – Inverted
 Non-return to zero –Level
• a negative voltage represents one binary value
and a positive voltage represents the other.
• In the example shown below
– 0 is represented by positive voltage
– 1 is represented by negative voltage
 NRZI (Nonreturn to Zero, invert on ones)
• The data themselves are encoded as the presence
or absence of a signal transition at the beginning
of the bit time.
– A transition (low to high or high to low) at the
beginning of a bit time denotes a binary 1 for that bit
time;
– no transition indicates a binary 0.
• NRZI is an example of differential encoding.
 What is differential encoding?
• In differential encoding, the information to be
transmitted is represented in terms of the changes
between successive signal elements rather than
the signal elements themselves.
• The encoding of the current bit is determined as
follows:
– If the current bit is a binary 0, then the current bit is
encoded with the same signal as the preceding bit;
– if the current bit is a binary 1, then the current bit is
encoded with a different signal than the preceding bit.
 Multilevel Binary
• These codes use more than two signal
levels.
– bipolar-AMI (alternate mark inversion)
– pseudoternary
 bipolar-AMI
• A binary 0 is represented by no line signal, and a
binary 1 is represented by a positive or negative
pulse.
• In the example below the binary 1 pulses must
alternate in polarity and most recent preceding 1
bit has negative voltage
 pseudoternary
• The binary 1 that is represented by the absence of a line
signal
• The binary 0 by alternating positive and negative pulses.
• In the example below most recent preceding 0 bit has
negative voltage
 Biphase
• Manchester
• Differential Manchester
 Manchester
– There is a transition at the middle of each
bit period.
– The mid-bit transition serves as a clocking
mechanism and also as data:
• a low-to-high transition represents a 1,
• high-to-low transition represents a 0.
 Differential Manchester
• the mid-bit transition is used only to provide
clocking.
• In this encoding scheme
– 0 is represented by the presence of a transition at the
beginning of a bit period
– 1 is represented by the absence of a transition at the
beginning of a bit period.
 DATA LINK CONTROL PROTOCOLS
• Because of the possibility of transmission errors,
and because the receiver of data may need to
regulate the rate at which data arrive,
synchronization and interfacing techniques are
insufficient by themselves.
• It is necessary to impose a layer of control in each
communicating device that provides functions such
as flow control, error detection, and error control.
• This layer of control is known as a data link control
protocol.
DATA LINK CONTROL PROTOCOLS(cont)
• Requirements and objectives for effective data communication
between two directly connected transmitting-receiving stations:
– Flow control: The sending station must not send frames at a rate
faster than the receiving station can absorb them.
– Error control: Bit errors introduced by the transmission system should
be corrected.
– Addressing: On a shared link, such as a local area network (LAN), the
identity of the two stations involved in a transmission must be
specified.
– Control and data on same link: It is usually not desirable to have a
physically separate communications path for control information.
– Link management: The initiation, maintenance, and termination of a
sustained data exchange require a fair amount of coordination and
cooperation among stations.
 FLOW CONTROL
• Flow control is a technique for assuring that a
transmitting entity does not overwhelm a
receiving entity with data.
• The receiving entity typically allocates a data
buffer of some maximum length for a transfer.
– When data are received, the receiver must do a
certain amount of processing before passing the
data to the higher-level software. In the absence of
flow control, the receiver’s buffer may fill up and
overflow while it is processing old data.
 Transmission and propagation Time
• Transmission time
– The time it takes for a station to emit all of the bits
of a frame onto the medium is the;
– This is proportional to the length of the frame.
• The propagation time
– time it takes for a bit to traverse the link between
source and destination.
 Stop-and-Wait Flow Control
• A source entity transmits a frame.
• After the destination entity receives the frame, it indicates its
willingness to accept another frame by sending back an
acknowledgment to the frame just received.
• The source must wait until it receives the acknowledgment
before sending the next frame.
• The destination can thus stop the flow of data simply by
withholding acknowledgment .
• This procedure works fine and, indeed, can hardly be improved
upon when a message is sent in a few large frames.
• But With the use of multiple frames for a single message, the
stop-and-wait procedure may be inadequate
Stop-and-Wait Flow Control(cont.)
• However, it is often the case that a source will break up
a large block of data into smaller blocks and transmit the
data in many frames. This is done for the following
reasons:
– The buffer size of the receiver may be limited.
– The longer the transmission, the more likely that there will be
an error, necessitating retransmission of the entire frame.
With smaller frames, errors are detected sooner, and a
smaller amount of data needs to be retransmitted.
– On a shared medium, such as a LAN, it is usually desirable not
to permit one station to occupy the medium for an extended
period, thus causing long delays at the other sending stations.
 Case where transmission time is greater than propagation time

• When a<1 ,(a is propagation

time and transmission time
is normalized to 1)the
propagation time is less
than the transmission time.
• In this case, the frame is
sufficiently long that the first
bits of the frame have
arrived at the destination
before the source has
completed the transmission
of the frame
 Case where transmission time is less than
propagation time
• When a>1, ,(a is
propagation time and
transmission time is
normalized to 1)the the
propagation time is
greater than the
transmission time.
• In this case, the sender
completes transmission of
the entire frame before the
leading bits of that frame
arrive at the receiver.
 Stop-and-Wait Flow Control
• Note
– For a>1 the line is always underutilized
– For a<1 the line is inefficiently utilized.
• In essence stop-and-wait flow control provides
inefficient line utilization for
– very high data rates,
– very long distances between sender and receiver,
 Sliding-Window Flow Control
• The essence of the problem described so far is
that only one frame at a time can be in transit.
• In situations where the bit length of the link is
greater than the frame length(a>1) serious
inefficiencies result.
• Efficiency can be greatly improved by allowing
multiple frames to be in transit at the same
time.
 Sliding-Window Flow Control (cont.)
• Let us examine how this might work for two stations , A and B,
connected via a full-duplex link.
• Station B allocates buffer space for W frames. Thus, B can accept
W frames, and A is allowed to send W frames without waiting for
any acknowledgments.
• To keep track of which frames have been acknowledged, each is
labeled with a sequence number.
• B acknowledges a frame by sending an acknowledgment that
includes the sequence number of the next frame expected.
• This acknowledgment also implicitly announces that B is
prepared to receive the next W frames, beginning with the
number specified.
 Sliding-Window Flow Control (cont.)
• This scheme can also be used to acknowledge multiple
frames.
• For example, B could receive frames 2, 3, and 4 but
withhold acknowledgment until frame 4 has arrived. By
then returning an acknowledgment with sequence
number 5, B acknowledges frames 2, 3, and 4 at one
time.
• A maintains a list of sequence numbers that it is allowed
to send, and B maintains a list of sequence numbers
that it is prepared to receive. Each of these lists can be
thought of as a window of frames.
 Sliding-Window Flow Control (cont.)
• the sequence number to be used occupies a field in
the frame therefore, it is limited to a range of values.
– For example, for a 3-bit field, the sequence number can
range from 0 to 7. Accordingly, frames are numbered
modulo 8; that is, after sequence number 7, the next
number is 0.
• In general, for a k-bit field
– the range of sequence numbers is 0 to 2k-1
– frames are numbered modulo 2k
– the maximum window size is 2k-1
Sliding-Window Flow Control (cont.)
 Sliding-Window Flow Control (cont.)
• The mechanism so far described provides a form of flow
control:The receiver must only be able to accommodate seven
frames beyond the one it has last acknowledged.
• Most data link control protocols also allow a station to cut off the
flow of frames from the other side by sending a Receive Not
Ready (RNR) message,
• Receive Not Ready (RNR) message
– acknowledges former frames
– but forbids transfer of future frames.
• For example , RNR 5 means “I have received all frames up through number 4
but am unable to accept any more at this time.”
• At some subsequent point, the station must send a normal
acknowledgment to reopen the window.
• If two stations exchange data, each needs to maintain two
windows, one for transmit and one for receive, and each side
needs to send the data and acknowledgments to the other.
• To provide efficient support for this requirement, a feature known
as piggybacking
• Each data frame includes a
– field that holds the sequence number of that frame
– plus a field that holds the sequence number used for acknowledgment.
• If a station has data to send and an acknowledgment to send, it
sends both together in one frame, saving communication capacity.
• if a station has an acknowledgment but no data to send, it sends a
separate acknowledgment frame, such as RR or RNR.
• If a station has data to send but no new acknowledgment to send,
it must repeat the last acknowledgment sequence number that it
sent.
– This is because the data frame includes a field for the acknowledgment
number, and some value must be put into that field. When a station
receives a duplicate acknowledgment, it simply ignores it.
• Sliding-window flow control is potentially
much more efficient than stop-and-wait flow
control.
• The reason is that, with sliding-window flow
control, the transmission link is treated as a
pipeline that may be filled with frames in
transit.
• In contrast, with stop-and-wait flow control,
only one frame may be in the pipe at a time
Error control
 ERROR DETECTION

• Regardless of the design of the transmission

system, there will be errors, resulting in the
change of one or more bits in a transmitted
frame.
Error Detection Process
 Error Detection Process
• For a given frame of bits, additional bits that constitute an error-
detecting code are added by the transmitter.
• This code is calculated as a function of the other transmitted bits.
• Typically, for a data block of k bits, the error-detecting algorithm yields
an error-detecting code of n-k bits, where n-k < K
• The error-detecting code, also referred to as the check bits, is appended
to the data block to produce a frame of n bits, which is then transmitted.
• The receiver separates the incoming frame into the k bits of data and n-
k bits of the error-detecting code.
• The receiver performs the same error-detecting calculation on the data
bits and compares this value with the value of the incoming error-
detecting code.
• A detected error occurs if and only if there is a mismatch.
 Parity Check
• The simplest error-detecting scheme is to append a
parity bit to the end of a block of data.
• The value of this bit is selected so that the character
has an even number of 1s (even parity) or an odd
number of 1s (odd parity).
• Note, however, that if two (or any even number) of bits
are inverted due to error, an undetected error occurs.
• The use of the parity bit is not foolproof, as noise
impulses are often long enough to destroy more than
one bit, particularly at high data rates.
 Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC)
• One of the most common, and one of the most
powerful, error-detecting codes
• Given a k-bit block of bits, or message, the
transmitter generates an n-k- bit sequence, known
as a frame check sequence (FCS), such that the
resulting frame, consisting of n bits, is exactly
divisible by some predetermined number.
• The receiver then divides the incoming frame by
that number and, if there is no remainder, assumes
there was no error.
 Modulo 2 Arithmetic
• Modulo 2 arithmetic uses binary addition with no carries,
which is just the exclusive-OR (XOR) operation.
• Binary subtraction with no carries is also interpreted as the
XOR operation:
• For example,
Back to CRC
Example on CRC
Example on CRC(cont.)
 Error control
• Error control refers to mechanisms to detect
and correct errors that occur in the
transmission of frames
• data are sent as a
sequence of frames;
frames arrive in the
same order in which
they are sent; and each
transmitted frame
suffers an arbitrary and
potentially variable
amount of delay
before reception.
• In addition ,there is possibility
of two types of errors:
• Lost frame: A frame fails to
arrive at the other side.
– For example, a noise burst may
damage a frame to the extent
that the receiver is not aware
that a frame has been
transmitted.
• Damaged frame: A
recognizable frame does
arrive, but some of the bits are
in error (have been altered
during transmission).
 common techniques for error control
• Error detection:
• Positive acknowledgment: The destination returns a
positive acknowledgment to successfully received, error-
free frames.
• Retransmission after timeout: The source retransmits a
frame that has not been acknowledged after a
predetermined amount of time.
• Negative acknowledgment and retransmission: The
destination returns a negative acknowledgment to
frames in which an error is detected. The source
retransmits such frames.
 Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ)
• Collectively, the mechanisms discussed on the
previous slide are all referred to as automatic
repeat request (ARQ);
• The effect of ARQ is to turn an unreliable data
link into a reliable one.
• Three versions of ARQ have been standardized:
– Stop-and-wait ARQ
– Go-back-N ARQ
– Selective-reject ARQ
 Stop-and-Wait ARQ
• Stop-and-wait ARQ is based on the stop-and-wait
flow control technique
• The source station transmits a single frame and then
must await an acknowledgment (ACK).
• No other data frames can be sent until the
destination station’s reply arrives at the source
station.
• Two sorts of errors could occur
– Frame that arrives at the destination could be damaged
– The acknowledgment could be damaged
 Damaged Frame
• The receiver detects this by using the error-detection
technique and simply discards the frame.
• To account for this possibility, the source station is
equipped with a timer.
• After a frame is transmitted, the source station waits for an
acknowledgment. If no acknowledgment is received by the
time that the timer expires, then the same frame is sent
again.
• Note that this method requires that the transmitter
maintain a copy of a transmitted frame until an
acknowledgment is received for that frame.
 Damaged Acknowledgment
• Station A sends a frame.
• The frame is received correctly by station B, which responds
with an acknowledgment (ACK).
• The ACK is damaged in transit and is not recognizable by A,
which will therefore time out and resend the same frame.
• This duplicate frame arrives and is accepted by B.
• B has therefore accepted two copies of the same frame as if
they were separate.
• To avoid this problem, frames are alternately labeled with 0
or 1, and positive acknowledgments are of the form ACK0
and ACK1.
• source A to destination B.
• The third frame transmitted
by A is lost or damaged and
therefore B does not return
an ACK.
• A times out and retransmit
the frame.
• Later,A transmits a frame
labeled 1 but the ACK0 for
that frame is lost. A times
out and retransmits the
same frame.When B receives
two frames in a row with the
same label, it discards the
second frame but sends
back an ACK0 to each.
 Advantage and disadvantage of Stop and
Wait ARQ
• Advantage
– Simplicity
• Disadvantage
– ineffeciency
 Go-Back-N ARQ
• The form of error control based on sliding-
window flow control that is most commonly
used is called go-back-N ARQ.
• In this method, a station may send a series of
frames sequentially numbered modulo some
maximum value.
• The number of unacknowledged frames
outstanding is determined by window size,
using the sliding-window flow control technique
• While no error occur, the destination will
acknowledge incoming frames as usual
• If the destination station detects an error in a frame, it
may send a negative acknowledgment for that frame.
• The destination station will discard that frame and all
future incoming frames until the frame in error is
correctly received.
• Thus, the source station , when it receives a REJ, must
retransmit the frame in error plus all succeeding
frames that were transmitted in the interim.
• Suppose that station A is sending frames to station B.
• After each transmission , A sets an acknowledgment
timer for the frame just transmitted. Suppose that B
has previously successfully received frame i-1 and A
has just transmitted frame i.
• The go-back-N technique takes into account the
following contingencies for the following cases:
– Damaged frame.
– Damaged RR
 1.Damaged frame
• If the received frame is invalid (i.e.,B detects an error, or the frame is so
damaged that B does not even perceive that it has received a frame), B
discards the frame and takes no further action as the result of that frame.
• There are two subcases:
a) Within a reasonable period of time,A subsequently sends frame i+1 . B receives
frame i+1 out of order and sends a REJ i. A must retransmit frame i and all
subsequent frames.
b) A does not soon send additional frames. B receives nothing and returns neither
an RR nor a REJ.
– When A’s timer expires, it transmits an RR frame that includes a bit known as the
P bit, which is set to 1.
– B interprets the RR frame with a P bit of 1 as a command that must be
acknowledged by sending an RR indicating the next frame that it expects, which
is frame i.
– When A receives the RR, it retransmits frame i. Alternatively, A could just
retransmit frame i when its timer expires.
 2.Damaged RR.
• There are two subcases
• (a) B receives frame i and sends RR i+1 which suffers an error in
transit. Because acknowledgments are cumulative (e.g., RR 6 means
that all frames through 5 are acknowledged), it may be that A will
receive a subsequent RR to a subsequent frame and that it will
arrive before the timer associated with frame i expires.
• (b) If A’s timer expires, it transmits an RR command as in Case 1b. It
sets another timer, called the P-bit timer. If B fails to respond to the
RR command, or if its response suffers an error in transit, then A’s P-
bit timer will expire.At this point,A will try again by issuing a new RR
command and restarting the P-bit timer. This procedure is tried for a
number of iterations. If A fails to obtain an acknowledgment after
some maximum number of attempts, it initiates a reset procedure.
 3.Damaged REJ.
• If a REJ is lost, this is equivalent to Case 1b.
 Because of the propagation delay on the
line, by the time that an acknowledgment
(positive or negative) arrives back at the
sending station, it has already sent at least
one additional frame beyond the one
being acknowledged. In this example,
frame 4 is damaged. Frames 5 and 6 are
received out of order and are discarded by
B. When frame 5 arrives, B immediately
sends a REJ 4.When the REJ to frame 4 is
received, not only frame 4 but frames 5
and 6 must be retransmitted. Note that
the transmitter must keep a copy of all
unacknowledged frames. The Figure also
shows an example of retransmission after
timeout. No acknowledgment is received
for frame 5 within the timeout period, so
A issues an RR to determine the status of
B.
 Selective-Reject ARQ
• With selective-reject ARQ, the only frames
retransmitted are those that receive a
negative acknowledgment, in this case called
SREJ, or those that time out.
• The Figure illustrates the
selective- Reject ARQ. When
frame 5 is received out of order,
B sends a SREJ 4, indicating that
frame 4 has not been received.
• However, B continues to accept
incoming frames and buffers
them until a valid frame 4 is
received. At that point, B can
place the frames in the proper
order for delivery to higher-layer
software
 Selective-Reject ARQ
• Selective reject would appear to be more efficient than
go-back-N, because it minimizes the amount of
retransmission.
• On the other hand, the receiver must maintain a buffer
large enough to save post-SREJ frames until the frame in
error is retransmitted and must contain logic for
reinserting that frame in the proper sequence.
• The transmitter, too, requires more complex logic to be
able to send a frame out of sequence. Because of such
complications, select-reject ARQ is much less widely used
than go-back-N ARQ