Noise in Communications

• Unavoidable presence of noise in the channel

– Noise refers to unwanted waves that disturb communications
– Signal is contaminated by noise along the path

• External noise: interference from nearby channels, human-made noise,

natural noise

• Internal noise: thermal noise, random emission in electronic devices

• Noise is one of the basic factors that set limits on communications

• A widely used metric is the signal-to-noise (power) ratio (SNR)

𝑆𝑖𝑔𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑝𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟 (𝑃 )
𝑆𝑁𝑅 =
𝑁𝑜𝑖𝑠𝑒 𝑃𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟 (𝑃 )

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 Signal to Noise Ratio

• Signal-to-noise ratio is an engineering term for the power ratio between a

signal (meaningful information) and the background noise

• Because many signals have a very wide dynamic range, SNRs are usually
expressed in terms of the logarithmic decibel scale.

• In decibels, the SNR is 20 times the base-10 logarithm of the amplitude

ratio, or 10 times the logarithm of the power ratio

• where is average power and is RMS amplitude.

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 Analog vs. Digital Signals

• Analog signal value varies

continuously

• Digital signals value limited to a finite

set
– Digital systems are more robust

• Binary signals
– Have 2 possible values
– Used to represent bit values
– Bit time needed to send 1 bit
– Data rate bits per second

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 Sampling and Quantization, I

• To transmit analog signals over a digital communication link, we must

discretize both time and values.

• Quantization spacing is ; sampling interval is , not shown in figure.

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 Sampling and Quantization, I

• The information in an analog waveform, with maximum frequency

and peak voltage , is to be sample and
quantized with quantization levels.
– What is the quantization spacing?

– What is the sampling interval?

– What is the bit transmission rate?

– What is the bandwidth efficiency if transmission bandwidth is 12KHz?

(Hint: BW efficiency unit is bits/sec/Hz)
bits/sec/Hz

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 Sampling and Quantization, II

• Usually sample times are uniformly spaced (although, this is not always
true). Higher frequency content requires faster sampling. (Soprano must
be sampled twice as fast as a tenor.)

• Quantization levels can be uniformly spaced, but non-uniform

(logarithmic) spacing is often used for voice.

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 Digital Transmission and Regeneration

• Simplest digital communication is binary amplitude-shift keying (ASK)

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 Channel Errors

• If there is too much channel distortion or noise, receiver may make a

mistake, and the regenerated signal will be incorrect.

• Channel coding is needed to detect and correct the message.

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 Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)

• To communicate sampled values,

we send a sequence of bits that
represent the quantized value.

• For 16 quantization levels, 4 bits

suffice.

• PCM can use binary representation

of value.

• The PSTN uses companded PCM

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 Performance Metrics

• Analog communication systems

– Metric is fidelity, closeness to original signal
– We want
– A common measure of infidelity is energy of difference signal:

• Digital communication systems

– Metrics are data rate 𝑅 in bits/sec and probability of bit error
𝑃 =𝑃 𝑏≠𝑏
– Without noise, never make bit errors
– With noise, 𝑃 depends on signal and noise power, data rate, and channel
characteristics.

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 Channel Capacity and Data Rate

• Channel bandwidth limits the signal bandwidth.

– Higher BW → More pulses over the channel
• Signal SNR at the receiver determines the recoverability of the transmitted
signal.
– High SNR → Signal pulse can use more signal levels → More bits with each pulse
transmission
• Both Bandwidth and SNR can affect the channel throughput.
• The Shannon capacity is the maximum possible data rate for a system with
noise and distortion
– This maximum rate can be approached with bit error probability close to 0
– For additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels,

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 Example

A communication system has an available bandwidth of 4KHz. If

the noise power is 100 times less than signal power.

• What is the capacity in bits/s if signal power is 1W?

C = 4000 log2(1 + 100) = 26.63 kbit/s
• How can the capacity in bits/s be equal to the bandwidth in
hertz?
Signal power = Noise power
or
At a SNR of 0 dB

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 Milestones in Communications
• 1837, Morse code used in telegraph
• 1864, Maxwell formulated the electromagnetic (EM) theory
• 1887, Hertz demonstrated physical evidence of EM waves
• 1890’s-1900’s, Marconi & Popov, long-distance radio telegraph
– Across Atlantic Ocean
– From Cornwall to Canada
• 1875, Bell invented the telephone
• 1906, radio broadcast
• 1918, Armstrong invented super heterodyne radio receiver (and FM in
1933)
• 1921, land-mobile communication
• 1928, Nyquist proposed the sampling theorem

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 Milestones in Communications

• 1947, microwave relay system

• 1948, information theory
• 1957, era of satellite communication began
• 1966, Kuen Kao pioneered fiber-optical communications (Nobel Prize
Winner)
• 1970’s, era of computer networks began
• 1981, analog cellular system
• 1988, digital cellular system debuted in Europe
• 2000, 3G network
• 2010, 4G LTE
• 2020, 5G (expected)

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