Pulse Code Modulation

(PCM)

1
 Basics of PCM
Pulse code modulation is used to convert
Analog signal to Digital signal.
In PCM system we do the sampling to convert
Analog signal to discrete signal.
After that we do the quantization to convert
discrete signal into digital signal.
After that we do the encoding of that digital
signal.

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 The digital modulation technique used is Pulse Code Modulation (PCM).

 A signal is pulse code modulated to convert its analog information

into a binary sequence. The output of a PCM will resemble a binary
sequence. The following figure shows an example of PCM output
with respect to instantaneous values of a given sine wave.

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 Basic Elements of PCM
PCM consists of three steps to digitize an
analog signal:
1. Sampling
2. Quantization
3. Binary encoding

PCM is widely popular because:

- Used for long time in telephone systems

- Inexpensive electronics exists

- Errors can be corrected during long haul transmission
- Can use time division multiplexing

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 PCM block diagram

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 Sampling
 Sampling is defined as, “The process of measuring the
instantaneous values of continuous-time signal in a discrete
form.”
 Sample is a piece of data taken from the whole data which is
continuous in the time domain. When a source generates an
analog signal and if that has to be digitized,
having 1s and 0s i.e., High or Low, the signal has to be
discretized in time. This discretization of analog signal is
called as Sampling.

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 Continuous signal and sampled signal

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 Sampling Rate
 Analog signal is sampled every TS secs.
 Ts is referred to as the sampling interval.
 fs = 1/Ts is called the sampling rate or sampling frequency.
 The sampling rate denotes the number of samples taken per
second, or for a finite set of values.

There are 3 sampling methods:

 Ideal - an impulse at each sampling instant
 Natural - a pulse of short width with varying
amplitude
 Flattop - sample and hold, like natural but with single
amplitude value.

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 Different types of sampling methods

Ideal sampling Natural sampling

Flat-top sampling

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 Nyquist Rate

According to Nyquist theorem the sampling rate must

be at least the two times of the highest frequency
contained in the signal.
fs = 2fm

Where fs = Sampling rate

And fm is the maximum frequency
 This rate of sampling is called as Nyquist rate.

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 Nyquist sampling rate for low-pass and band pass signals

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 Quantization
The digitization of analog signals involves the rounding off of the
values which are approximately equal to the analog values. The
method of sampling chooses a few points on the analog signal and
then these points are joined to round off the value to a near
stabilized value. Such a process is called as Quantization

 Sampling results in a series of pulses of varying amplitude values

ranging between two limits: a min and a max.
 The amplitude values are infinite between the two limits.
 We need to map the infinite amplitude values onto a finite set of
known values.
 This is achieved by dividing the distance between min and max
into L zones, each of height 
 = (max - min)/L
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 Quantization Levels

 The midpoint of each zone is assigned a value from 0

to L-1 (resulting in L values)
 Each sample falling in a zone is then approximated to
the value of the midpoint.

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 Quantization Zones
 Assume we have a voltage signal with amplitutes
Vmin=-20V and Vmax=+20V.
 We want to use L=8 quantization levels.
Zone width = (20 - -20)/8 = 5
 The 8 zones are: -20 to -15, -15 to -10, -10 to -5, -5 to 0,
0 to +5, +5 to +10, +10 to +15, +15 to +20
 The midpoints are: -17.5, -12.5, -7.5, -2.5, 2.5, 7.5, 12.5,
17.5

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 The following figure represents an analog signal. This signal to get converted
into digital, has to undergo sampling and quantizing.

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 The quantizing of an analog signal is done by discretizing the signal with a
number of quantization levels. Quantization is representing the sampled
values of the amplitude by a finite set of levels, which means converting a
continuous-amplitude sample into a discrete-time signal.

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 Both sampling and quantization result in the loss of information. The quality
of a Quantizer output depends upon the number of quantization levels used.
The discrete amplitudes of the quantized output are called
as representation levels or reconstruction levels. The spacing between
the two adjacent representation levels is called step-size (s).

quantized signal

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 Types of Quantization
There are two types of Quantization - Uniform Quantization
and Non-uniform Quantization.
The type of quantization in which the quantization levels are
uniformly spaced is termed as a Uniform Quantization. The
type of quantization in which the quantization levels are
unequal and mostly the relation between them is logarithmic, is
termed as a Non-uniform Quantization.

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 Quantization Error
The difference between an input value and its quantized value is called
a Quantization Error.

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 Bit rate and bandwidth requirements of
PCM
 The bit rate of a PCM signal can be calculated form the number
of bits per sample x the sampling rate
Bit rate = nb x fs
 The bandwidth required to transmit this signal depends on the
type of line encoding used.
 A digitized signal will always need more bandwidth than the
original analog signal..

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