Communication systems

Introduction
by
Kehali Anteneh
Course objectives
 To provide concrete understanding on analog and digital communication
system components

 To present understanding on noise and its impact in communication

systems

 To deliver understanding on performance metrics, performance and

performance comparison of communications systems and their components

 To provide understanding on information & coding theory and channel

capacity
Course outline(open to modify )
1. Review of digital communication systems

2. Information theory and coding :

 Introduction

 types of coding

 application and design

Continued-----------
3. Digital Modulation Techniques
 PSK, FSK and QAM,
 Noise performance of digital modulation techniques
 Optimum receiver design for digital modulation techniques in the presence
of noise
 Mitigation techniques
Continued
4. Spread Spectrum Communication Systems:
 Introduction
 Types spread spectrum communication
 modeling and design of spread spectrum communication.

5. Introduction to MIMO Communication:

 Introduction,
 Principles
 types
 Modeling and design of MIMO Systems.

6. Introduction to OFDM Communication

Continued
Evaluation /Assessment
 Exams, Quiz’s, Assignments and simulation and laboratory evaluation (50%)

 Final exam 50%

Reference
1. Haykin: Communication Systems 4th edition

2. Taub and Schilling: Principles of Communication Systems, 2nd edition

3. Leon W. Couch:Digital and Analog Communication Systems (6th Edition)

4. B.P. Lathi: Modern Digital and Analog Communications Systems (The Oxford
Series in Electrical and Computer Engineering)
What is a communication system?.

 Communication systems are designed to transmit information.

 Communication systems Design concerns:

 Selection of the information–bearing waveform;

 Bandwidth and power of the waveform;

 Effect of system noise on the received information;

 Cost of the system.

What makes a Communication System GOOD?
 We can measure the “GOODNESS” of a communication system in many ways:

 How close is the estimate to the original signal m(t)

• Better estimate = higher quality transmission
• Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) for analog m(t)
• Bit Error Rate (BER) for digital m(t)
 How much power is required to transmit s(t)?
• Lower power = longer battery life, less interference
 How much bandwidth B is required to transmit s(t)?
• Less B means more users can share the channel
• Exception: Spread Spectrum -- users use same B.
 How much information is transmitted?
• In analog systems information is related to B of m(t).
• In digital systems information is expressed in bits/sec.
 Objectives of system design
 Two primary resources in communications
 Transmitted power (should be green)
 Channel bandwidth (very expensive in the commercial market)
 In certain scenarios, one resource may be more important than the other
 Power limited (e.g. deep-space communication)
 Bandwidth limited (e.g. telephone circuit)
 Objectives of a communication system design
 The message is delivered both efficiently and reliably, subject to certain design
constraints: power, bandwidth, and cost.
 Efficiency is usually measured by the amount of messages sent in unit power,
unit time and unit bandwidth.
 Why Digital Communication?
 Advantages
 Relatively inexpensive digital circuits may be used
 Privacy is preserved by using data encryption
 Data from voice, video, and data sources may be merged and transmitted over a common
digital transmission system;
 In long-distance systems, noise dose not accumulate from repeater to repeater.
 Data regeneration is possible
 Errors in detected data may be small, even when there is a large amount of noise on the
received signal;
 Errors may often be corrected by the use of coding.

 Disadvantages
 Generally, more bandwidth is required than that for analog systems;
 Synchronization is required.
Main disadvantages:
Large System Bandwidth
 Digital transmission requires a large

 system bandwidth to communicate the same information in a

 digital format as compared to analog format.

 System Synchronization
 Digital detection requires system synchronization whereas the analog signals
generally have no

 such requirement
 Application of digital communication
 The digital communication is the basis for all modern communication systems such
as:

 Mobile communication systems (GSM, UMTS,..)

 Satellite Communications

 Digital TV

 Internet…

 The digital communication becomes very efficient, cheap, and reliable after the large
progress in the manufacturing of digital Integrated Circuits (IC)
Block Diagram of Typical Digital Communication System
Transmitter
• The transmitter converts the electrical signal into a form that is suitable for
transmission through the physical channel or transmission medium.

• For example, in radio and TV broadcast, the Federal Communications

Commission (FCC in USA, PTA, FAB, in Pakistan) specifies the frequency range
for each transmitting station.

• Hence, the transmitter must translate the information signal to be transmitted into
the appropriate frequency range that matches the frequency allocation assigned to
the transmitter.

• Thus, signals transmitted by multiple radio stations do not interfere with one
another. 14
Transmitter
 In general, the transmitter performs the matching of the message signal to the
channel by a process called modulation.

 Usually, modulation involves the use of the information signal to systematically

vary either the amplitude, frequency, or phase of a sinusoidal carrier.

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Communication
 The channel is central to operation of a communication system
 Linear (e.g., mobile radio) or nonlinear (e.g., satellite)
 Time invariant (e.g., fiber) or time varying (e.g., mobile radio)
 The information-carrying capacity of a communication system is proportional to the
channel bandwidth
 Pursuit for wider bandwidth
 Copper wire: 1 MHz
 Coaxial cable: 100 MHz
 Microwave: GHz
 Optical fiber: THz
• Uses light as the signal carrier
• Highest capacity among all practical signals
Source Encoding
• Conver the output of either an analog or a digital source into
a sequence of binary digits.

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Channel Encoder
 Introduces some redundancy bits in the binary information sequence
that can be used by the channel decoder at the receiver to overcome the
effects of noise and interference

 Coding adds additional bits to the original message bits to provide a

means of protecting the original information.

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Digital Modulator
• The binary sequence at the output of the channel encoder is passed to
the digital modulator, which serves as the interface to the
communications channel.

• The primary purpose of the digital modulator is to map the binary

information sequence into signal waveforms.

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Digital Demodulator
• The digital demodulator processes the channel-corrupted transmitted
waveform and reduces each waveform to a single number that
represents an estimate of the transmitted data symbol.

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Source Decoder
 The source decoder accepts the output sequence from the channel
decoder and, from knowledge of the source encoding method used,
attempts to reconstruct the original signal from the source.

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Noise in communication
 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, humanmade 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)

 Noise
 Noise is the unwanted and beyond our control waves that disturb the transmission
of signals.
 Where does noise come from?
 Noise is the unwanted and beyond our control waves that disturb the transmission
of signals.
 Where does noise come from?
– External sources: e.g., atmospheric, galactic noise, interference;
– Internal sources: generated by communication devices themselves.
• This type of noise represents a basic limitation on the performance of electronic
communication systems.
• Shot noise: the electrons are discrete and are not moving in a continuous steady flow, so the
current is randomly fluctuating.
• Thermal noise: caused by the rapid and random motion of electrons within a conductor due to
thermal agitation.
 White Noise
 The additive noise channel
 n(t) models all types of noise
 zero mean
 White noise
 Its power spectrum density (PSD) is constant over all frequencies,

 Factor 1/2 is included to indicate that half the power is associated with positive
frequencies and half with negative.
 The term white is analogous to white light which contains equal amounts of all
frequencies (within the visible band of EM wave).
 It s only defined for stationary noise.
Overview of communication system
Public switching telephone system
Cellular network
Internet
Broadcasting
WLAN
Satellite/Space Communication
 Satellite communication
 Cover very large areas
 Optimized for one-way transmission
 Radio (DAB) and movie (SatTV)
broadcasting
 Two-way systems
 The only choice for remote-area and
maritime communications
 Space communication
 Missions to Moon, Mars, …
 Long distance, weak signals
 High-gain antennas
 Powerful error-control coding
Reading Assignment
1. Read, experiment and write what you can and can not do with MATLAB
Communication Toolbox?

2. Read autocorrelation and power spectral density (PSD)

Thank you