Addis Ababa University

Addis Ababa Institute of Technology

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

End-to-End Implementation of a Digital Communication

System.

By: Leul Wuletaw

Advisors’ Name: Dr. –Ing. Dereje Hailemariam

Date of submission: 22, MAR 2017
 Abstract
The role of Digital communication in our day-to-day life is drastically increasing. State of the art
technological improvements are being deployed now and then to cope with the increasing
demand of users. In order to make the system even more reliable and pervasive, we need to
harness and respond to the need of manufacturers and designers. This can be achieved by
pointing out and addressing every single distortion that occurs between the transmitter and
receiver swiftly and accordingly.

For digital communication to be feasible and applicable in the real world, it is a must to take care
of processes happening between the transmitter and receiver. A single fault between the two
would undoubtedly result in the total loss of transmitted data. Hence, this thesis tries to examine
major blocks present in digital communication system and lays out an easy-to-use mechanism for
designing such systems.

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 Table of Contents

Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………………...….. 2

Introduction and Background….………………………………………………………..……1

Problem Statement………………………………………………………………………….….2

Objective………………………………………………………………………………………...3

Methodology…………………………………………………………………………………....4

Deliverables…………………………………………………………………………………....5

Tentative Project Plan………………………...………………………………………………..6

References…………………………………………………………………………………….....7

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 Introduction and Background

Digital communication is undeniably the best and modern way used to realize communication
between users. It is used pervasively from mobile handsets in our hand to the high bandwidth
satellite communication. Digital communication involves transfer of information containing
messages in the form of packets. Hence, enabling it to advance hand-in-hand with the current
development of digital integrated circuitries. This also makes it robust to noise and external
interference imposed by environment and communication devices (transmitters and receivers)
themselves; therefore, making it more immune than its analog counterpart.

Digital communication, unlike analog communication doesn’t directly send message signals
imposed on the carrier rather the message is encoded and transmitted to be later decoded again at
the receiver. This makes it safe enough performing encryption as it is able to withstand
eavesdropping.

Digital communication system can be represented as a sequence of blocks with different and
interrelated functions cascaded altogether. Initial blocks present at the transmitter side are
encoder and modulator where message signals are sampled and converted in to data packet and
then transmitted using a specific modulation scheme. The channel describes a statistical behavior
of a path through which a signal is transmitted till it reaches receiver. It presents noise,
interference and delay through which the transmitted signal passes. Finally, synchronization,
demodulation and decoding are performed at the receiver to retrieve the transmitted information.

Designing a digital communication system encompasses broad analyzation and consideration of

various factors arising in and out of the various system blocks. For instance, where and when the
digital communication system is deployed, type of information to be transmitted, signal-to-noise
power ratio (SNR), type of channel, so forth and so on. So it emanates from considering the
simplest factors and carrying out optimization for other additional factors accordingly.

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 Problem Statement
Despite availability of independent implementations and analysis of specific

blocks (entities) conducted by experts, there is lack of a comprehensive performance

analysis made which would serve as a platform for comparing various schemes and

techniques.

Increasing demand of digital communication systems locally necessitates the use

of efficient schemes and techniques subject to the requirement of the designer (vendor).

As a result, various schemes may be put forward as a candidate. But selecting the one

that suits best for a given application requires thorough investigation. And this all

requires conducting a broad survey of the available schemes.

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 Objective
General objective

End-to-end design of a digital communication system is the main goal of this project.

Specific objectives

 To study and identify approaches to perform each entity of a digital

communication system.

 To design and implement each approach.

 To identify and pinpoint factors affecting the performance of each approach and

their computational requirement.

 To develop visual depiction of each approach performance based on the above

factors.

 To make comparison amongst approaches implemented within each block.

a)

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 Methodology
The design of a digital communication system involves basically two steps:

i. Design of the whole system on a block-by-block basis.

ii. Software implementation of the design using simulating software like MATLAB.
iii. Developing a GUI abstracting and simplifying the background programming for end
users.

i. Design Architecture

Message Digital Pulse Shaping

Encoder Modulation Filter

Synchronization Channel

Message Digital Matched

Decoder Demodulation Filtering

ii. Software Implementation

Each block diagrams in the design architecture must be sequentially analyzed and implemented
for the whole system to provide end-to-end digital communication system. Powerful tools like
MATLAB will be used to design the system.

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 Deliverables
This project aims to provide a MAT LAB based graphical user interface (GUI) application to
enable user friendly evaluation of entities making up a digital communication system.

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 Tentative Project Plan

Activities Time of
implementation
2.5 weeks 2.5 weeks 4 weeks 1.5 weeks 2.5 weeks
Assessing
material
related to the
subject
Modeling
design
Programming
Simulation
Design and
simulation
analysis
Thesis
writing

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 References
[1] John G. Proakis, Masoud Salehi, “Digital Communications,” 5th_Edition,

McGraw-Hill, NewYork, 2008.

[2] Simon Haykin, “Communication Systems,” 4th_Edition, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,

NewYork, 2001.

[3] Y. Linn, "Synchronization and Receiver Structures in Digital Wireless

Communications (workshop notes)," in Seminario Internacional 15 Años,

Bucaramanga, Colombia, August 15-19 2006.

[4] Carlson, A. Bruce, “Communication Systems: an introduction to signals and

noise in electrical communication,” 4th_Edition, McGraw-Hill, NewYork, 2002.

[5] John G. Proakis, Masoud Salehi, “Contemporary Communication systems using

MAT LAB,” 5th_Edition, PWS publishing company, Boston, MA, 1998.

[6] Louis Litwin, “Matched filtering and timing recovery in digital receivers

[Online],” Available: http://www.rfdesing.com, September 2007.

[7] Behzad Razavi, “Design of Monolithic Phase-Locked Loops and Clock Recovery

Circuits,” IEEExplore, 1996.

[8] Lecture “Digital Communication [Online],” Available:

http://www.ece.utah.edu/~ece6590, University of Utah, February 2008.

[9] Tauseef Ahmad, “Implementation and Optimization of High Speed Symbol

Timing Recovery Algorithms,”Master's Thesis, Dept. Comput. Sci. and Eng.,

Chalmers Univ, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2012.

[10] Meng Qiu et al., “Simple and efficient frequency offset tracking and carrier

phase recovery algorithms in single carrier transmission systems,” Optical

society of America, vol. 21, no. 7, 2013.

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