CHAPTER FOUR

Base band pulse signaling

Introduction
 Many signals in modern communication systems
are digital.
 Additionally, analog signals are transmitted
digitally.
 Digitizing a signal results in reduced distortion
and improvement in signal-to noise ratios.
 A digital signal is superior to an analog signal
because it is more robust to noise, and can easily be
recovered, corrected and amplified.
 For this reason, the tendency today is to change an
analog signal to digital data.
The sampling theorem
 Sampling is the process of taking periodic
sample of the waveform to be transmitted.
The process of transmitting signals in the form
of pulses (discontinuous signals) by using
special techniques.
 The signal is sampled at regular intervals such
that each sample is proportional to the
amplitude of signal at that instant.This
technique is called “sampling”.
 Sampling is common in all pulse modulation
techniques.
 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 more samples that are taken, the more
final outcome looks like the original wave;
However if fewer samples are taken, then
other kinds information could be transmitted”.
There are 3 sampling methods:
 Ideal sampling-an impulse at each sampling
instant (at Ts sec instant).
 Natural sampling-a pulse of short width with
varying amplitude.
 Flat top sampling-sample and hold, like
natural but with single amplitude value.
Sampling theorem (Nyquist’s theorem)
 Is used to determine minimum sampling rate for
any signal so that the signal will be correctly
restored at the receiver.
 Nyquist’s theorem states that, “The original
information signal can be reconstructed at the
receiver with minimal distortion if the sampling
rate in the pulse modulation system is equal to or
greater than twice the maximum information
signal frequency.
According to the sampling/Nyquist theorem, the
sampling rate must be at least 2 times the highest
frequency contained in the signal.
fs =sampling frequency and
fm = maximum frequency of the modulating signal.
Basic condition of sampling process
1. Sampling at fs =2fm(max)
 In practice it is difficult to design a low pass
filter, in order to restore the original
modulating signal.
2. Sampling at fs > 2fm(max)
 This sampling rate creates a guard band
between fm(max) and the lowest frequency
component (fs-fm(max)) of the sampling
harmonics.
 Therefore, a more practical LPF can be used to
restore the modulating signal.
3. Sampling at fs< 2fm(max)
 When the sampling rate is less than the
minimum value, distortion will occurs.
 This distortion is called aliasing.
 Aliasing effect can be eliminated by using an
anti-aliasing filter prior to sampling and using a
sampling rate slightly higher than Nyquist rate
(fs=2fm).

 Sampling alone is not a digital technique.

 The immediate result of sampling is a pulse-
amplitude modulation (PAM) signal.
Nyquist sampling rate for low-pass and bandpass signals
Quantization and Encoding
 Quantization: Is the process of dividing the
maximum value of the analog signal into a fixed
number of levels in order to convert the PAM
into a Binary Code. The levels obtained are
called “quantization levels”.
 The process of converting an analog signal into
PCM is called coding, the inverse operation is
called decoding.
 We will discuss these points later in the PCM
section.
Fig: Carrier for Continuous Wave and Pulse Modulation
Need for Pulse Modulation
 Comparing to continuous wave modulation (like
AM, FM), the performance of all pulse
modulation schemes except PAM in presence of
noise is very good.
 Due to better noise performance, it requires less
power to cover large area of communication.
 Due to better noise performance and requirement
of less signal power, the pulse modulation is
most preferred for the communication between
space ships and earth.
ANALOG PULSE MODULATION (APM)
 In APM, the carrier signal is in the form of
pulse waveform, and the modulated signal is
where one of the characteristic (either
amplitude, width or position) is changed
according to the modulating/audio signal.
The three common techniques of APM are:
Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM),
Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) and
 Pulse Position Modulation (PPM).
 Pulse Amplitude Modulation /PAM
 The simplest form of pulse modulation.
 In PAM, amplitude of pulses is varied in
accordance with instantaneous value of
modulating signal.

Fig: Generation of PAM

Fig: Waveforms of PAM
 The amplitude of a constant width, constant
position pulsed carrier signal is varied according to
the instantaneous amplitude of the modulating
signal.
 Basically the modulating signal is sampled by the
digital train of pulses and the process is based upon
the sampling theorem.
 The PAM signal can be detected by passing it
through a low pass filter.
Advantages of PAM
• It is easy to generate and demodulate PAM.
Disadvantages of PAM
• Since PAM does not utilize constant amplitude
pulses, output is distorted due to additive noise
so that it is infrequently used.
• Transmission bandwidth required is too large.
• Transmitted power is not constant.
Application of PAM
• Used in radio telemetry for remote monitoring
and sensing.
Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)
 When the width of pulsed carrier varies in
accordance with the instantaneous amplitude of
modulating signal, is called PWM where
amplitude and position remains constant.
 Also known as Pulse Duration Modulation
(PDM).
 PWM gives better signal to noise ratio
performance than PAM.
Advantages of PWM
1. More immune to noise.
2. Synchronization between transmitter and receiver is
not required.
PWM still works if synchronization between
transmitter and receiver fails, whereas PPM does not.
3. Possible to separate out signal from noise.
4. PWM has advantage, when compared with PPM, that
is its pulses are of varying width and therefore of
varying power content.
Applications of PWM
• PWM is used in special purpose communication
systems mainly for military but is seldom used for
commercial digital transmission system.
Pulse Position Modulation (PPM)
 PPM is when the position of a constant width and
constant amplitude pulse within prescribed time slot
is varied according to the amplitude of the
modulating signal.
 PPM has the advantage of requiring constant
transmitter power output.
 But, it has the disadvantage of depending on
transmitter-receiver synchronization.
 PPM has less noise due to amplitude changes,
because the received pulses may be clipped at the
receiver, thus removing amplitude changes caused
by noise.
Advantages of PPM
1. Good noise immunity.
2. Requires constant transmitter power output.
Disadvantages of PPM
1. Requires synchronization between transmitter and
receiver.
2. Large Bandwidth requirement.
Applications of PPM
1. It is used for optical communication system where
there is no multipath interference.
2. PPM is useful for narrowband FM channel
allocation, with these channel characteristics in the
radio control and model aircraft, boats and cars.
3. PPM is also used for military applications.
Comparison of PAM, PWM and PPM
Digital Pulse Modulation
It is mainly of two types:
 Pulse Code Modulation(PCM)
 Delta Modulation(DM)
Pulse Code Modulation(PCM)
Pulse-Code Modulation (PCM) is the most
commonly used digital modulation scheme.
 PCM is a form of digital modulation where
group of coded pulses are used to represent the
analog signal. The analog signal is sampled and
converted to a fixed length, serial binary number
for transmission.
 In PCM, the available range of signal voltages is
divided into levels and each is assigned a binary
number.
 Each sample is represented by a binary number
and transmitted serially.
 The number of levels available depends upon
the number of bits used to express the sample
value.
PCM consists of three steps to digitize an analog
signal:
1. Sampling
2. Quantization
3. Binary encoding
 Before we sample, we have to filter the signal to
limit the maximum frequency of the signal .
 Filtering should ensure that we do not distort the
signal, i.e. remove high frequency components
that affect the signal shape.

Fig. A block diagram of PCM system (single channel)

Principles of PCM
 Three main process in PCM transmission are
sampling, quantization and coding.
1. Sampling– is a process of taking samples of
information signal at a rate of Nyquist’s sampling
frequency.
2. Quantization– is a process of assigning the
analog signal samples to a predetermined discrete
levels. The number of quantization levels ,L,
depends on the number of bits per sample, n, used
to code the signal.
Where,
 The magnitude of the minimum step size of the
quantization levels is called resolution, ∆V.
 It is equal in magnitude to the voltage of the least
significant bit of the magnitude step size of the
digital to analog converter (DAC). The resolution
depends on the maximum voltage, Vmax, and the
minimum voltage Vmin of the information
signal, where,
 Quantization error or quantization noise is the
distortion introduced during the quantization
process when the modulating signal is not an
exact value of the quantized level.
 It is the difference between original signal and
the quantized signal magnitude that is :

 Quantization error can be reduced by increasing the

number of quantization level BUT this will increase the
ENCODING: This is a process where each quantized
sample is digitally encoded into n-bits code word.

Where, n = number of bits/sample and

L = number of quantization levels
 Transmission bit rate (R):is the rate of information
transmission (bits/sec). It depends on the sampling
frequency and the number of bit per sample used to
encode the signal and is given by
Fig: Components of PCM encoder
To recover an analog signal from a digitized signal
we follow the following steps:
 We use a hold circuit that holds the amplitude
value of a pulse till the next pulse arrives.
 We pass this signal through a low pass filter with
a cutoff frequency that is equal to the highest
frequency in the pre-sampled signal.
 The higher the value of L, the less distorted a
signal is recovered.
Fig: Components of PCM decoder
Delta Modulation
 In Delta modulation, only one bit is
transmitted per sample.
 That bit is a one if the current sample is more
positive than the previous sample, and a zero
if it is more negative.
 Since so little information is transmitted, delta
modulation requires higher sampling rates
than PCM for equal quality of reproduction.
 This scheme works well for small changes in
signal values between samples.
 If changes in amplitude are large, this will
result in large errors.
Components of Delta Modulation
Delta demodulation components
Examples:
1. A complex low-pass signal has a bandwidth of 200
kHz. What is the minimum sampling rate for this
signal?
Solution
 The bandwidth of a low-pass signal is between 0 and
f, where f is the maximum frequency in the signal.
Therefore, we can sample this signal at 2 times the
highest frequency (200 kHz).
 The sampling rate is therefore 400,000 samples per
second.
2. We want to digitize the human voice. What is
the bit rate, assuming 8 bits per sample?
Solution:
 The human voice normally contains
frequencies from 0 to 4000 Hz. So the
sampling rate and bit rate are calculated as
follows:
3. A sinusoidal input wave of 3kHz is to be
sampled at the lowest rate for transmission as
pulses. Calculate the minimum sampling
frequency required, so that all components of
the wave can be reconstructed at the receiver.
4. The PCM sampled are encoded into 4-bits
system. If the minimum sampling rate used is
8kHz, calculate
a) The frequency of the information signal
b) The quantization level.
c) The transmission rate
d) The transmission bandwidth
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