Chapter 3 – Data Transmission

Text Book: Data and Computer Communications

Author: William Stallings

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 Transmission Terminology

• Guided medium
• eg. twisted pair, coaxial cable, optical fiber

• Unguided (wireless) medium

• eg. air, water, vacuum

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 Transmission Terminology

• Direct link
• No intermediate devices (except Amp/Repeaters)

• Point-to-point
• guided medium
• direct link
• only 2 devices share link

• Multi-point
• more than two devices share the link
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 Transmission Terminology
• Simplex
• one direction (one fixed transmitter & one receiver)
• eg. Television

• Half Duplex
• either direction, but only one way at a time
• eg. police radio

• Full Duplex
• both directions at the same time
• eg. telephone
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 Signal – Analog and Digital
• Signal is single valued function of an independent
variable
• In communication, this independent variable is
time or frequency
• Analog signal
• Amplitude / strength varies smoothly
• Can take continuous values of amplitudes b/w two
extremities set for a system
• Infinite possible amplitude levels

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 Signal – Analog and Digital

• Digital signal
• Amplitude/strength varies abruptly and maintains
constant level for some period
• Finite and discrete set of amplitude levels
• Finite possible amplitude levels

• Comparison of analog and digital signals

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Analogue & Digital Signals

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Time Domain & Frequency Domain

• Time domain
• Signal is viewed as function of time i.e. s(t)
• s(t) specifies amplitude of signal at each instant of time

• Frequency domain
• Signal is viewed as function of frequency i.e. s(f)
• s(f) specifies peak amplitude of constituent frequencies

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Periodic Signal

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 Sine Wave
• Peak Amplitude (A)
• Maximum strength of signal
• Typically measured in volts
• Frequency (f)
• rate of change of signal or cycles per second
• Hertz (Hz)
• Time Period is time for one repetition (T)
• T = 1/f in sec
• Phase ()
• relative position in time with in a single period of signal
• 2 pie = 360 degree = 1 period
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Varying Sine Waves
s(t) = A sin(2ft +)

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Sine Wave – Different Frequencies

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Sine Wave – Different Frequencies

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 Wavelength ()
• Distance occupied by one cycle
• i.e. between two points of corresponding phase in two
consecutive cycles
• assuming signal velocity v have  = vT
• or equivalently f = v
 especially when v=c
 c = 3*108 meter/sec (speed of light in free space)
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 Frequency Domain Concepts
• Signal is in general made up of many frequencies
• Components are sine waves
• Fourier analysis can show that any signal is made
up of component sine waves

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 Frequency Domain Concepts
• Signal is in general made up of many frequencies
• Components are sine waves
• Fourier analysis can show that any signal is made
up of component sine waves

• Fundamental frequency – all other frequencies

are integer multiple of this
• Time period of the signal is 1/Fundamental Freq
• Let us plot s(t) in frequency domain
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Frequency Domain Representation

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 Spectrum & Bandwidth
• Spectrum
• range of frequencies contained in signal
• e.g. f and 3f in previous signal
• Absolute Bandwidth
• width of spectrum
• e.g. 2f in previous signal
• Effective Bandwidth (or just “bandwidth”)
• narrow band of frequencies containing most energy in signal
• DC Component
• component of zero frequency
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 Square Waveform

Sinc
function
 Data Rate and Bandwidth
• Any transmission system has a limited band of frequencies
• This limits the data rate that can be carried
• Square have infinite frequency components and hence
absolute bandwidth is infinite
• However, most energy in first few components
• Limited bandwidth of transmission system increases
distortion
• There exists direct relationship between data rate &
bandwidth
 Basic Terminologies
• Data
• entities that convey meaning
• Signal
• is electric or electromagnetic representation of data
• Signaling
• physical propagation of signal along a medium
• Transmission
• communication of data by signaling and processing of
signals
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Analog and Digital Data

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 Analog and Digital Data
• Analog Data
• Examples are audio and video
• Spectrum of audio signal is between 100 Hz to 7 KHz
• Dynamic amplitude range of audio signal is about 25 dB
• dB is decibels PdB = 10 log10 (Ratio of Power)
• Digital Data
• Example is text or character string
• Text are easy for humans
• Machines understand binary data thus text code like
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Acoustic Spectrum (Analog)

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Analog and Digital Signal

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 Analog and Digital Signal
• Analog signal
• Amplitude / strength varies smoothly
• Can take continuous values of amplitudes b/w two
extremities set for a system
• Infinite possible amplitude levels
• Digital signal
• Amplitude/strength varies abruptly and maintains
constant level for some period
• Finite and discrete set of amplitude levels
• Finite possible amplitude levels
 Digital Signaling – Pros and Cons
Advantages of Digital signaling
1. Digital signaling are generally cheaper than analog
signaling
2. Digital signaling is more immune to noise interference
Disadvantage of Digital signaling
1. Digital signaling suffers from more attenuation due to
limited bandwidth of transmission system

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Analog & Digital Signaling
of
Analog and Digital Data

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Analog data to Analog Signal

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 Analog Data to Analog Signal
• Example of analog data is sound (acoustic or audio) wave
• Spectrum (i.e range of frequencies) of audio signal is 20Hz-
20kHz
• Sound frequencies (amplitude is loudness) are easily
converted into
• electromagnetic frequencies who amplitudes are in volts
• Can limit frequency range for voice channel to 300-3400Hz
 Video Signals

• Another example of analog data to analog signal is video

signal

• The bandwidth of video signal is approximately 4 MHz

• Explore more from the text book…….

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Digital data to Digital Signal

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 Digital Data to Digital Signal
• Binary data is generated by computers
• Simple digital signal for binary data has two dc
components
• bandwidth depends on data rate
Digital data to Analog Signal

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 Digital Data to Analog Signal
• Analog signals can be profitably used to represent digital
data
• Example - Modem (Modulation/De-Modulation) device
• Encodes binary digital data onto a carrier frequency
• Carrier freq is decided as per the propagation medium
• Modems encode digital data to voice spectrum since
telephone line are voice-grade
Analog data to Digital Signal

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 Analog Data to Digital Signal
• Analog data can be represented by digital signal
• Example – Codec (Coder/Decoder)
• Codec performs analog data to digital signal conversion for
voice signal
• In other words codec converts analog voice data into bit
stream
Analog Signaling
Digital Signaling

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Analog and Digital
Transmission

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 Analog Transmission
• Analog transmission deals with signaling and processing of
analog signals
• These analog signals may represent analog data or digital
data
• Amplifiers are used to boost the signal’s strength to
achieve long distance communication
• Amplifier boosts the strength of the signal present at its
input
• No distinction between noise and actual signal
• Both gets amplified
• Tolerable for analog data but not for digital data
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 Digital Transmission
• Used intrinsically for digital signaling and processing
• Repeaters are used instead of amplifiers
• Removes cascading amplification of noise
• Reconstructs the signal
• Digital transmission may also allow signalling and
processing of analog signals
• If they represent digital data
• Repeater recovers digital data from the analog
signal and generates new analog signal
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Transmissions

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 Transmission Impairments
• Due to transmission impairments, the signal
received may differ from signal transmitted causing:
• For analog signals 
• For digital signals 

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 Transmission Impairments
• Due to transmission impairments, the signal
received may differ from signal transmitted causing:
• For analog signals  degradation of signal quality
• For digital signals  bit errors
• Most significant impairments are
• Attenuation and attenuation distortion
• Delay distortion
• Noise

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 Attenuation
• Strength of signal falls off with distance as signal propagates
over any medium
• Expressed in decibles (dB) per unit distance
• Strength of received signal must be:
• strong enough to be detected by the receiver circuitry
• sufficiently higher than noise to be recover data without error
• Thus to increase strength amplifiers/repeaters are used
• Attenuation distortion occurs due to channel characteristics
• Attenuation varies as a function of frequency
• Sol  equalize attenuation across band of used frequencies
• eg. Equalizers
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 Attenuation Distortion

• Attenuation distortion is of less problem to digital signal

than analog signal, i.e. more critical for analog….Why?
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 Delay Distortion
• Cause  velocity of propagation of signal through
guided medium varies with frequency
• Hence various frequency components arrive at
different times
• Implies different delays & spreading which distorts the signal
• For bandlimited signal
• velocity tends to be higher near the center frequency and
falls off towards edges
• Critical for digital data
• some of the energy of signal corresponding to one bit spill
over into neighboring bit others causing ISI
• ISI (Intersymbol interference) limits maximum bit rate over
channel
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Delay Distortion

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 Noise
• Additional unwanted / undesired signals inserted
between transmitter and receiver
• Noise is characterized by randomness & unpredictability
• It is major limiting factor in communications system
• Noise interference results in amplitude fluctuations
• Noise may be divided into four categories:
1. Thermal Noise
2. Intermodulation Noise
3. Crosstalk
4. Impulse Noise
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 Thermal Noise
• Cause: Thermal agitation of electrons (function of temp)
• Present in all the electronic devices and transmission
media
• It is called as white noise  uniformly distributed across
entire bandwidth in communication systems
• Cannot be removed thus lays upper bound on
performance in communication system
• Effect is significant in satellite communication

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 Thermal Noise
• Noise Power Density (No) i.e. thermal noise in
bandwidth of 1 Hz

• Thermal noise is white noise i.e. independent of

frequency thus it value in watts

• In decibel-watts

• oK = 273 + oC (Room Temperature 273 + 17 = 290 oK)

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 Intermodulation Noise
• When signals of different frequencies propagate through
same transmission medium
• Results in generation of sum or difference frequencies or
integer multiples of those frequencies
• These extra signals produced interfere with intended
signals at that frequencies
• It is produced due to the nonlinearities in
communication systems
• For linear systems output should be equal to the input scaled
with some constant.
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 Crosstalk
• Cause: Unwanted coupling between signal paths

• Electrical coupling between twisted pairs

• Microwave antennas picking up more than desired

signals

• Crosstalk is of the same order of magnitude or less than

that of thermal noise

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 Impulse Noise
• Impulse 

• Impulse noise 

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 Impulse Noise
• Impulse  spike of short duration

• Impulse noise  Irregular spikes of short duration and

relatively high amplitude

• Cause: External electromagnetic disturbances as well as

faults and flaws in communication systems

• Impulse noise has severe effect on digital data as it

results in errors
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 Various transmission impairments results in
• degradation of quality of analog signal and
• corruption in digital signal

Now the question arises -

For digital data, to what extent these impairments limits
that rate at which data could be transmitted over a
channel?

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 Channel Capacity
• Maximum rate at which data can be transmitted over a
channel under given conditions (channel’s max data rate)
• Greater the bandwidth of communication facility,
higher is the cost involved thus
• Thus for a given bandwidth limited channel we want max
channel capacity!
• Channel capacity is a function of
• data rate is rate at which data can be communicated (bps)
• bandwidth is width of spectrum of channel (Hz)
• noise is considered as average level of noise over channel
• error rate is rate at which error occurs (unit less eg. 10-2 )
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 Nyquist Bandwidth
• Assumption: Noise free channel
• Given a channel of bandwidth B, the highest signal rate
that can be carried is 2B
• If the signals to be transmitted are binary (two voltage
levels), then
• data rate is equal to signal rate (i.e. 2B bps for B Hz)
• Can increase rate by using M signal levels
• Nyquist Formula is: C = 2B log2 M (i.e. C is prop to B)
• So increase rate by increasing number of distinct signals
at cost of receiver complexity
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 Shannon Capacity Formula
• Now remove the assumption of noise free channel
• Consider relation of data rate, noise & error rate
• Faster data rate implies shorter bit duration so noise affects
more bits
• So given noise level, higher date rate implies higher errors

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• For a given noise, higher data rate results in higher error rate
• What could be done to keep the error rate same even if data
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 Shannon Capacity Formula
• Now remove the assumption of noise free channel
• Consider relation of data rate, noise & error rate
• Faster data rate implies shorter bit duration so noise affects
more bits

• So given noise level, higher date rate means higher errors

• Signal to noise ratio (in decibels)

• High SNR will mean a high-quality signal and less number of

required intermediate repeaters.
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 Shannon Capacity Formula
• Channel Capacity C = B log2 (1 + SNR) bps
• It is theoretical maximum capacity that can achieved!
• In practice, much lower rate is achieved
• Since the formula takes into account only thermal noise and
not other transmission impairments
• C is directly proportional to bandwidth
• C is directly but logarithmically proportional to SNR
• Also if B increases then noise power N also increases!
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 Summary
• looked at data transmission issues
• frequency, spectrum & bandwidth
• analog vs digital signals
• transmission impairments

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