Physical Layer

It is the lowest layer (from the bottom) of the OSI layer model or TCP/IP layering model.

The primary task of the Physical Layer is to take information from DLL (adjacent layer) in the form of bits and convert it
into electromagnetic / optical signals (based on the transmission media).

In other words, Task of Physical layer is “Bit-by-Bit Delivery”.

So, it is important to understand how data gets converted from bits into signal.

Digital data to Digital Signal

Digital data to Analog Signal
Analog data to Analog Signal
Analog data to Digital Signal

Example : sound created by human voice (analog data) can be converted using microphone into analog signal for
transmission (or digital data using sample and hold circuit for storage) the transmitted signal can be received by the
receiver and converted into human voice (analog signal) to be heard by the receiver.
 Physical Layer

Data : is a set of values of qualitative or quantitative variables about one or more persons or objects.

Signal : In electronics and telecommunications, it refers to any time varying voltage, current or electromagnetic wave
that carries information. In other words, Signal is electromagnetic encoding of data.

Data can be analog or digital. The term analog data refers to information that is continuous; digital data refers to
information that has discrete states.

Signals can also be either analog or digital. An analog signal has infinitely many levels of intensity over a period of
time. A digital signal, on the other hand, can have only a limited number of defined values

Periodic Signal : A periodic signal completes a pattern within a measurable time frame, called a period, and repeats that
pattern over subsequent identical periods.

Non-periodic Signal : A non-periodic signal does not exhibit a pattern or cycle that repeats over time.

In our discussion data will most likely refer to stored values while signal will refer to information during transmission
(not stored values).
 Physical Layer

CPU
Memory

Cache

System I/O

Network DMA : Direct Memory Access

Interface Card
(NIC) Programmed I/O : via Processor
Physical Layer
 Figure 3.17: Two digital signals: one with two signal levels and the
other with four signal levels

3.5
 Physical Layer

Periodic Analog Signal : Periodic analog signals can be classified as simple or composite.

A simple periodic analog signal, (ex:- a sine wave), cannot be decomposed into simpler signals.

A composite periodic analog signal is composed of multiple simple (ex: sine) waves. Hence, can be decomposed into
simple signals.
 Physical Layer

A Sine Wave can be represented by three Parameters

Peak Amplitude : of a signal is the absolute value of its highest intensity, proportional to the energy it carries.

Frequency : refers to number of cycles per unit of time.

Phase : refers to position of the waveform relative to initial time T0.

Physical Layer
 Figure 3.5: Two signals with the same phase and amplitude, but
different frequencies

3.9
 Figure 3.6: Three sine waves with different phases

3.10
 Physical Layer

Wavelength : is the distance travelled by a wave in a time period.

Wavelength : in other words, It is the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same phase on the
wave, such as two adjacent crests, troughs.

Speed = Frequency * Wavelength (v = f * λ )

(Meter/second) = ( 1 / second) * (meter)

 Figure 3.7: Wavelength and period

3.12
 Physical Layer

Time-domain V/s Frequency domain (representation of a sine wave) :

The time-domain plot shows changes in signal amplitude with respect to time (it is an amplitude-versus-time plot).
Phase is not explicitly shown on a time-domain plot.

In Frequency-Domain a sine wave is represented by a spike.

The position of the spike shows the frequency.
The Height of the spike shows the peak amplitude.
 Figure 3.8: The time-domain and frequency-domain plots of a sine wave

3.14
 Figure 3.11: Decomposition of a composite periodic signal

3.15
 Figure 3.10: A composite periodic signal

3.16
 Physical Layer

Bandwidth :

The range of the frequencies contained in a composite signal is known as its bandwidth.

In other words, The bandwidth of a composite signal is the difference between the highest and the lowest frequencies
contained in that signal.

Ex : If lowest frequency contained in a signal is 1000 Hz and Highest frequency is 5000 Hz then

Bandwidth = 5000 – 1000 = 4000 Hz = 4kHz.

 Figure 3.12: Time and frequency domain of a non-periodic signal

3.18
 Figure 3.13: The bandwidth of periodic and nonperiodic composite
signals

3.19
 Physical Layer

If a periodic signal is decomposed into five sine waves with frequencies of 100, 300, 500, 700, and 900 Hz, what is its
bandwidth? Draw the spectrum, assuming all components have a maximum amplitude of 10 V.
 Figure 3.14: The bandwidth for example 3.10

3.21
 Physical Layer

A periodic signal has a bandwidth of 20 Hz. The highest frequency is 60 Hz. What is the lowest frequency? Draw the
spectrum if the signal contains all frequencies of the same amplitude.
 Figure 3.15: The bandwidth for example 3.11

3.23
 Figure 3.16: The bandwidth for example 3.12

3.24
 Physical Layer

A Signal has to travel through transmission media which are not ideal.

A non-ideal transmission media causes some concerns. These concerns are known as transmission impairments.

In other words, the signal at the beginning of the medium is not the same as the signal at the end of the medium.

The three causes of transmission impairments are : Attenuation, Distortion and Noise.

Attenuation means a loss of energy.

When a signal, simple or composite, travels through a medium, it loses some of its energy in overcoming the resistance
of the medium.

To compensate for this loss in energy, amplifiers are used to amplify the signal.
 Figure 3.27: Attenuation and amplification

3.26
 Physical Layer

Q.1 Suppose a signal travels through a transmission medium and its power is reduced to one half. This means that P2 =
0.5 P1. Find the attenuation (loss of power).
 Physical Layer

Ex: One reason that engineers use the decibel to measure the changes in the strength of a signal is that decibel numbers
can be added (or subtracted) when we are measuring several points (cascading) instead of just two.
 Physical Layer

Distortion means that the signal changes its form or shape.

Distortion can occur in a composite signal made of different frequencies.

Each signal component has its own propagation speed through a medium hence arrives distorted at the final destination

Several types of noise, such as thermal noise, induced noise, crosstalk, and impulse noise, may corrupt the signal.

Thermal noise is the random motion of electrons in a wire, which creates an extra signal not originally sent by the
transmitter.

Crosstalk is any phenomenon by which a signal transmitted on one circuit or channel of a transmission system creates an
undesired effect in another circuit or channel.

Crosstalk is usually caused by undesired capacitive, inductive, or conductive coupling from one circuit or channel to
another
 Figure 3.29: Distortion

3.30
 Figure 3.31: Two cases of SNR: a high SNR and a low SNR

3.31
 Physical Layer

The power of a signal is 10 mW and the power of the noise is 1 μW; what are the values of SNR and SNRdB?
 Physical Layer

Data rate: how fast we can send data, in bits per second.

Nyquist for a noiseless channel.

Shannon for a noisy channel

Nyquist : Bit Rate = 2 * Bandwidth * log L (where L is No. of Signal Levels)

2

Shannon : Capacity = Bandwidth * log2 (1+SNR). (where SNR is Signal-to-Noise ratio)

 Physical Layer

Consider a noiseless channel of bandwidth 3000 Hz transmitting a signal with four signal levels (for each level, we send 2
bits). Calculate the maximum bit rate.
 Physical Layer

Calculate the theoretical highest bit rate of a regular telephone line. A telephone line normally has a bandwidth of 3000
Hz (300 to 3300 Hz) assigned for data communications. The signal-to-noise ratio is usually 3162
 Physical Layer

Digital to Digital Conversion

Digital to Digital Conversion

Line coding Block coding Scrambling

 Figure 4.4: Line coding scheme

Polar Schemes : Voltage level oscillate between + ve and – ve although it may remain at Zero level also.

Bipolar Schemes : There are 3 voltage levels ( + ve, - ve, Zero). One data element is at zero level while other element
oscillates between positive and negative levels.

4.37
 Physical Layer

N shows the bit rate (number of bits sent per second).

r shows the number of bits carried by each change in the signal level.

In NRZ-L (NRZ-Level), the level of the voltage determines the value of the bit.

In NRZ-I (NRZ-Invert), the change or lack of change in the level of the voltage determines the value of the bit.
If there is no change, the bit is 0;
if there is a change, the bit is 1.

The main problem with NRZ is lack of clock synchronization. (continuous long sequence of 0s).

return-to-zero (RZ) scheme, which uses three values: positive, negative, and zero.

main disadvantage of RZ encoding is that it requires two signal changes to encode a bit and therefore occupies greater
bandwidth

In Manchester encoding the transition at the middle of the bit provides synchronization.
 Physical Layer

In Differential Manchester, the bit values are determined at the beginning of the bit. If the next bit is 0, there is a
transition; if the next bit is 1, there is no transition.

Alternate mark inversion (AMI): 1 is alternated; 0 voltage represents logic 0.

Pseudoternary : 0 and 1 are reversed as compared with AMI.

Multi-Level Scheme : The motivation is to increase data speed or decrease the required bandwidth. mBnL
m : is the length of the binary pattern (data).
B : binary data
n : is length of the signal pattern
L : number of Levels in the signal.
L is Typically represented by an alphabet : T: Ternary (for L=3); Q: Quaternary (for L=4).

2B1Q : scheme encodes 2-data elements (of Binary data) into a single signal element where
signal has 4 Levels.

8B6T : scheme encodes 8-data elements (of Binary data) into a 6 signal element where signal
has 3 Levels.
 Physical Layer

In general, block coding changes a block of m bits into a block of n bits, where n is larger than m. Block coding is
referred to as an mB/nB encoding technique.

Scrambling, DC Component (a signal of 0 frequency) as well as Synchronization (lost due to continuously large sequence
of 0s) are major problems. AMI scheme does suffer from continuous 0s.

Scrambling techniques is used to replace continuous sequence of 0s with other signal levels. Two common scrambling
techniques are B8ZS and HDB3

B8ZS (Binary with 8-zero Substitution) : replaces a sequence of 8 zeros with pattern 000VB0VB

V (violation) or B (bipolar) here is relative. The V means the same polarity as the polarity of the previous nonzero pulse;
B means the polarity opposite to the polarity of the previous nonzero pulse.

In other words, V => Violation of AMI rule; B => Bipolar (No violation just follow the AMI rule).

HDB3 (High-Density bipolar 3-Zero) :

replaces “0000” with “000V” if no. of non-zero pulses after previous substitution is ODD (to make overall number
of non-zero pulses even).
replaces “0000” with “B00V” if no. of non-zero pulses after previous substitution is EVEN (to make overall number
of non-zero pulses even).
 Figure 4.2: Signal elements versus data elements

4.41
 Figure 4.5: Unipolar NRZ scheme

4.42
 Figure 4.6: Polar schemes (NRZ-L and NRZ-I)

4.43
 Figure 4.7: Polar schemes (RZ)

4.44
 Figure 4.8: Polar biphase

4.45
 Figure 4.9: Bipolar schemes: AMI and pseudoternary

4.46
 Figure 4.10: Multilevel: 2B1Q

4.47
 Figure 4.11: Multilevel: 8B6T

4.48
 Figure 4.14: Block coding concept

4.49
 Figure 4.15: Using block coding 4B/5B with NRZ-I line coding scheme

4.50
 Table 4.2: 4B/5B mapping codes

4.51
 Figure 4.18: AMI used with scrambling

4.52
 Figure 4.19: Two cases of B8ZS scrambling technique

4.53
 Figure 4.20: Different situations in HDB3 scrambling technique

4.54
 Physical Layer

Analog to Digital conversion

There are 2 techniques used for D-to-A conversion : pulse code modulation (PCM) and delta modulation
(DM).

Once digital data is created, it can be converted into digital signal for transmission as discussed earlier.

Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)

 Physical Layer

Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) :

PCM has 3 stages : Sampling, Quantization and Encoding.

Sampling : The analog signal is sampled every Ts seconds, where Ts is the sample interval or period.

Sampling Frequency : The inverse of the sampling interval is called the sampling rate or sampling
frequency fs = 1/Ts.

3 Types of Sampling : Ideal, Natural and flat-top sampling.

Sampling is also known as pulse amplitude modulation (PAM).

Nyquist theorem: to reproduce original signal the sampling rate be at least twice the highest frequency
in the original signal.
 Physical Layer

Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) :

PCM has 3 stages : Sampling, Quantization and Encoding.

Quantization :

Step 1 : assume that the original analog signal has values between Vmin and Vmax.

Step 2 : divide the range into L zones, each of height Δ (delta). Δ = (Vmax − Vmin) / L

Step 3 : assign quantized values of zones 0 to L − 1 to the midpoint of each zone.

Step 4 : approximate the value of the sample amplitude to the quantized values.
 Physical Layer

Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) :

PCM has 3 stages : Sampling, Quantization and Encoding.

Quantization levels : (L)

Lower values of L increases the quantization error if there is a lot of fluctuation in the signal.
Higher values of L increases the accuracy of the signal at the expense of storage and
Bandwidth.

Quantization Error : The value of the error for any sample is less than Δ/2.
In other words, Quantization error is always between −Δ/2 ≤ error ≤ Δ/2.

Encoding : each sample can be changed to an nb-bit code word. (where nb = log2L).

Bit rate = sampling rate × number of bits per sample = fs × nb

 Physical Layer

Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) :

PCM has 3 stages : Sampling, Quantization and Encoding.

Recovery of the Original Signal (decoding):

Bandwidth requirement : the minimum bandwidth of the digital signal is nb times greater than the bandwidth
of the analog signal.
Bmin = nb × Banalog
 Figure 4.21: Components of PCM encoder

4.60
 Figure 4.22: Three different sampling methods for PCM

4.61
 Figure 4.26: Quantization and encoding of a sampled signal

4.62
 Figure 4.27: Components of a PCM decoder

4.63
 Physical Layer

Delta Modulation (DM) :

DM finds the change from the previous sample.

DM is less complex in comparison with PCM technique.

 Figure 4.28: The process of delta modulation

4.65
 Figure 5.2: Types of digital to analog conversion

5.66
 Physical Layer

Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK) :

In amplitude shift keying, the amplitude of the carrier signal is varied to create signal elements. Both
frequency and phase remain constant while the amplitude changes.

Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) :

In frequency shift keying, the frequency of the carrier signal is varied to create signal elements. Both
amplitude and phase remain constant while the frequency changes.

Phase Shift Keying (PSK) :

In phase shift keying, the phase of the carrier signal is varied to create signal elements. Both
amplitude and frequency remain constant while the phase changes.
 Figure 5.3: Binary amplitude shift keying

5.68
 Figure 5.4: Implementation of binary ASK

5.69
 Figure 5.6: Binary frequency shift keying

5.70
 Figure 5.7: Implementation of BFSK

5.71
 Figure 5.9: Binary phase shift keying

5.72
 Figure 5.11: QPSK and its implementation

5.73
 Physical Layer

Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) :

Inspired by BPSK researchers wanted to use 2 data elements per signal element.

Constellation Diagram :
It helps us in defining AMPLITUDE and PHASE of a signal element, particularly when we are using
two-carriers (one in-phase and one quadrature).
Horizontal X-axis refers to in-phase carrier.
Vertical Y-axis refers to quadratic carrier.
The length of the line (vector) that connects point to the origin represents peak amplitude of
the signal element (combination of X and Y components).

Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) :

PSK is limited by the ability of the equipment to distinguish small differences in phase. This factor
limits its potential bit rate.
The idea of using two carriers, one in-phase and the other quadrature, with different amplitude levels
for each carrier is the concept behind quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM).
 Figure 5.12: Concept of a constellation diagram

5.75
 Figure 5.14: Constellation diagrams for some QAMs

5.76
 Physical Layer

Analog to Analog conversion :

Modulation is needed if the medium is bandpass in nature or if only a bandpass channel is available to
us.
 Figure 5.15: Types of analog-to-analog modulation

5.78
 Figure 5.16: Amplitude modulation

5.79
 Figure 5.17: AM band allocation

5.80
 Figure 5.18: Frequency modulation

5.81
 Figure 5.20: Phase modulation

5.82
 Physical Layer

Bandwidth utilization:

Multiplexing : is the set of techniques that allows the simultaneous transmission of multiple signals
across a single data link.

Multiplexing can be used when bandwidth of a medium linking two devices is more than the bandwidth
needed of the devices.

Frequency-division multiplexing (FDM) is an analog technique that can be applied when the bandwidth
of a link (in hertz) is greater than the combined bandwidths of the signals to be transmitted.

In FDM, signals generated by each sending device modulate different carrier frequencies. These
modulated signals are then combined into a single composite signal that can be transported by the
link.

Wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) is designed to use the high-data-rate capability of fiber-optic

cable.

Time-division multiplexing (TDM) is a digital process that allows several connections to share the high
bandwidth of a link.
 Physical Layer

Bandwidth utilization:

Spread Spectrum : To provide anti-jamming and protection from intruder.

In PM transmission, the phase of the carrier signal is modulated to follow the changing voltage level
(amplitude) of the modulating signal. The peak amplitude and frequency of the carrier signal remain
constant, but as the amplitude of the information signal changes, the phase of the carrier changes
correspondingly.
 Figure 6.2: Categories of multiplexing

6.85
 Figure 6.3: Frequency-division multiplexing

6.86
 Figure 6.4: FDM Process

6.87
 Figure 6.5: FDM demultiplexing example

6.88
Example 6.1

Assume that a voice channel occupies a bandwidth of 4 kHz.

We need to combine three voice channels into a link with a
bandwidth of 12 kHz, from 20 to 32 kHz. Show the
configuration, using the frequency domain. Assume there
are no guard bands.

Solution
We shift (modulate) each of the three voice channels to a
different bandwidth, as shown in Figure 6.6.

6.89
 Figure 6.6: Example 6.1

6.90
 Figure 6.10: Wavelength-division multiplexing

6.91
 Figure 6.11: Prisms in wave-length division multiplexing

6.92
 Figure 6.12: TDM

6.93
 Figure 6.13: Synchronous time-division multiplexing

6.94
 Figure 6.15: Interleaving

6.95
 Physical Layer

Bandwidth utilization:

Spread Spectrum : To provide anti-jamming and protection from intruder.

In PM transmission, the phase of the carrier signal is modulated to follow the changing voltage level
(amplitude) of the modulating signal.

The peak amplitude and frequency of the carrier signal remain constant, but as the amplitude of the
information signal changes, the phase of the carrier changes correspondingly.

The direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) technique also expands the bandwidth of the original
signal, but the process is different. In DSSS, we replace each data bit with n bits using a spreading
code.
 Figure 6.27: Spread spectrum

6.97
 Figure 6.29: Frequency selection in FHSS

6.98
 Figure 6.30: FHSS cycles

6.99
 Figure 6.31: Bandwidth sharing

6.100
 Figure 6.32: DSSS

6.101
 Figure 6.32: DSSS example

6.102
 Computer Networks (Introduction)

References:

Lecture slide on Forouzan, B.A. and Mosharraf, F., 2012. Computer networks: a top-down approach (p. 931).
McGraw-Hill.