Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering

Digital Communication Lab Report

Hardware Experiment No.4

Implementation of Delta Modulation

Submitted By
J.Sudheer B140319EC
K.Vineel B140798EC
G.Manoj B140346EC
Ch.Uday B140817EC
Christy B120885EC
Aim:
To implement the hardware of delta modulation and to observe the advantages and
disadvantages of Delta Modulation.

Components Required:
LM741 OP-AMP
7474 D flip-flop
1N4007 diode
Resistors
Capacitors

Theory:
Delta modulation is a special case of differential pulse code modulation. Here the prediction
of the next sample is simply the previous sample. But DM takes the assumption that the
message signals do not change abruptly. Thus the sampling frequency needs to be much
higher than the Nyquist rate. What is transmitted is a high or low pulse to indicate whether
the signal has gone up or down. Thus each sample is encoded as a pulse of height delta(s)
which is the difference in the amplitudes of the signal input at present instant and that of
immediate previous instant. Thus it only needs one bit per sample for transmission. Hence
the name delta modulation or one bit PCM.
Practically, the delay element employed may be an integrator, counter and so on. However,
if the signal amplitude is varying at a very large rate, then a minimum value of the fixed step
size can result in a waveform that doesnt follow the input variations perfectly and the
received signal will be in error. This is referred to as the so-called Slope Overload Effect.
Mathematically, for a step size S and message signal x (t), to avoid slope overload effect,
()
|max

Hence we need to impose a constraint that the maximum variation in the slope of the
message signal has to be lower than the ratio of step size to sampling interval. But if the step
size is raised to meet the said specifications, then a dc input itself will have its reconstructed
version varying greatly in amplitude. This is the problem of Granular Noise.
The biggest advantage of using Delta Modulation is the simplicity of implementation. Here,
the modulator stage has to just detect whether the signal amplitude at time t is less than or
greater than that at time t-t1, where t1 is the time period between two transmissions. Thus,
the receiver can be ideally implemented using a comparator and a delay circuit where the
comparator compares the present value of input message signal and the output of delay
circuit connected in feedback and send a logic high or logic low level accordingly.
On the other hand, as mentioned, DM needs a very high sampling rate so as to consider the
input samples to be highly correlated. Combined with the problems caused by Slope overload
and granular noise, Delta modulation is a suitable choice in a communication system where
the message signal amplitude doesnt vary in a random fashion or in other words, the
derivative of the rate of change of message signal is small.

Circuit Diagram:

Integrator Design:

1
RC = 16.T and T = 60K

Let C = 0.1F
Then R 2.2K
Circuit Working:
A comparator is used whose inputs are message signal and the output of the RC integrator as
shown in the block diagram. The comparator is realized using an opamp (LM741). Ideally,
sampling requires multiplying with an impulse train. But an impulse train is practically not
realizable. Thus we go for an alternative. We use a positive edge triggered D FF such that
output is obtained only at the rising edge of the clock. The clock frequency is made equal to
the required sampling frequency. Here we must ensure that the sampling frequency is much
higher than the frequency of the Nyquist rate because DM assumes that the input does not
change abruptly. But the input to a D FF needs to be digital. Thus the output of the comparator
(ideally 15V) is to be made 0- 5V. This is accomplished with the use of a diode (for taking one
cycle) and two resistors (for voltage division 15V to 5V).
This is then fed to the D FF and we get output at intervals of Ts, the sampling time. This output
should again be converted back to 15V to be fed to the integrator. This is realized using a
threshold detector (using LM741) of the threshold voltage of about 2.5 V. The output is then
given to a buffer (to avoid distortions and losses) and then to the integrator. The output of
the integrator is given to the first comparator. This is the basic working of transmitter module
of Delta Modulation.

Observations:

1. Integrator output:
 2. Delta Modulated wave:

Result:
The hardware of Delta Modulation was set up and the output was observed.