Bandwidth

Limiting AND
RESTORING DIGITAL
SIGNALS
Experiment #04

Submitted By:
Chan, Daniel Matthew Padi
Delos Santos, Mary Rose Penaso

Submitted To:
Prof. Aruta, Jenny

Course / Year Level / Section:

BS ECE
3rd Year SY. 2022 – 2023
CEIT-29-502P
Objectives:
 To be able to observe the effect of bandwidth limiting using PCM transmission system.

Theoretical Discussion:
Based on this Experiment #04 it is all about observing bandwidth limiting and restoring
digital signals. In setting the PCM transmission system, the PCM Encoder module converts its
variable dc voltage output to digital codes which were composed of binary values that a PCM
Decoder decodes and result to a sample DC voltage.

Based from the preliminary discussion, the message can move from a transmitter to
receiver over a channel. For the initial set-up of the experiment, the channel is the connection in
between the PCM Encoder module’s output and the PCM Decoder module’s input. After setting
the initial set-up, a Low Pass Filter was connected in between the PCM Encoder’s output and PCM
Decoder’s input to be able to limit the bandwidth in the channel. Limiting the bandwidth of the
channel causes the PCM Decoder to output incorrect voltages. It is because as the bandwidth of
a signal is decreased, the quantization error will decrease. Due to the said factors, the error that
will produce will be large. This is because as other signals were removed, the output will be
changed. Therefore, not all signals will be retrieved also due to the errors from a communications
system transmitting speech, the message reconstructed sounds likely as noisy channel.
Eye diagrams were used to test the performance of the channel. To be able to do this, the
space between the traces or the eyes can be observed. If the spaces are wide open, the signal
was not affected by the bandwidth limiting. Otherwise, the eyes begin to close. Since bandwidth
limiting causes distortion of digital signals, the received digital data must be cleaned-up or
restored before it must be decoded. It can be done using a comparator. Even when the restored
digital signal and the original digital signal are almost identical to each other, there is a difference
that can be observe which was their amplitude whereas will be high whenever there is gain. This
can be avoided because the amplitude does not affect the bandwidth of a signal. As the DC
voltage was varied, it causes the comparator output wrong information because the voltage must
be specific under the bandwidth to be able to generate correct information. In the other hand as
the channel’s bandwidth was slowly turned narrower by decreasing the LPF Filter’s Cut-Off
Frequency, it can be also observed that the comparator finds it hard to restore too much
distorted signal.
 ANSWER/S TO QUESTION/S
Question 01 Why does bandwidth limiting of the channel cause the PCM Decoder module to
output incorrect voltages as well as the correct one? Tip: If you’re not sure, see the preliminary
discussion.
 Limiting the bandwidth of the channel causes the PCM Decoder to output
incorrect voltages. It is because as the bandwidth of a signal is decreased, the
quantization error will decrease. Due to the said factors, the error that will
produce will be large. This is because as other signals were removed, the output
will be changed. Therefore, not all signals will be retrieved.

Question 02 If this were a communications system transmitting speech, what would these
errors sound like when the message is reconstructed?
 The errors from a communications system transmitting speech as the message
reconstructed sounds likely as noisy channel.

Question 03 What two things are happening to cause the digital signal to change shape?
 The two things that are happening to cause the digital signal to change shape
are the change of the width of the input and phase shift which causes the code
to change.

Question 04 What other change to your communication system distorts the digital signal in the
same way as increasing its bit-rate?
 The frequency from the Voltage Controlled Oscillator changes.

Question 05 Although the restored digital signal is almost identical to the original digital signal,
there is a difference. Can you see what it is? Tip: If you can’t, use one of the scope’s Vertical
Position controls overlay the two signals.
 The amplitude will be high whenever there is gain.

Question 06 Can this difference be ignored? Why?

 Yes it is possible, this can and may be ignored because the amplitude won’t
affect the bandwidth.
Question 07 Why do some DC voltages cause the comparator to output the wrong
information?
 The DC voltage causes the comparator output wrong information because the
voltage must be specific under the bandwidth to be able to generate correct
information.

Question 08 Why does the comparator begin to output the wrong information when this
control is turned far enough?

 Because the comparator is restoring too much signal, and comparators cannot
be used to restore too much distorted signal.

Question 09 How can the comparator restore the bandwidth limited digital signal when it is
so distorted?

 The only way to possibly restore the distorted bandwidth signal is to use a
COMPARATOR.
 The band limited signal is connected to one of the comparator’s inputs and a
variable DCV is connected to others.
 The band limited signal swings above and below the required O/P Voltage.
 This produces required DC Voltage of O/P with the amplification [generally,
comparator used for squaring (on clipping).
 This way, the Variable DC Voltage adjusted till we get right points of this O/P
[bandlimited signal] [on copy of original signal].

DC VOLTAGE

O/P
Band Limited Signal

COMPARATOR
DATA and RESULTS

Final Signal in Figure 03 and Figure 04

Final Signal in Figure 05 and Figure 06

Final Signal in Figure 07 and Figure 08

Final Signal in Figure 09 and Figure 10

 Final Signal in Figure 11 and Figure 12

Final Signal for Eye Diagram Figure 01 and Figure 02

Final Signal in Figure 13 and Figure 14
 PROOF OF EXPERIMENTATIONS
Figure 03 and Figure 04

CHANNEL A

CHANNEL B

FINAL SIGNAL
Figure 05 and Figure 06

CHANNEL A

CHANNEL B

FINAL SIGNAL
Figure 07 and Figure 08

CHANNEL A CHANNEL B

CHANNEL C FINAL SIGNAL

Figure 09 and Figure 10

CHANNEL A CHANNEL B

CHANNEL C FINAL SIGNAL

Figure 11 and Figure 12

CHANNEL A and CHANNEL C

CHANNEL B

FINAL SIGNAL
(EYE DIAGRAM) Figure 01 and Figure 02

CHANNEL A CHANNEL B

CHANNEL C FINAL SIGNAL

Figure 13 and Figure 14

CHANNEL A & CHANNEL C

CHANNEL B

FINAL SIGNAL
OBSERVATION/S:
- During the experiment, we have observed that with a different procedure to compensate
for its shortcomings. On the PCM decoding, it processes the data and as it reaches the encoding,
it recovers the distorted signal while its amplitude does not affect the bandwidth.
We were also able to visually assess the performance of a system in operation using an
eye diagram, which looked like a series of eyes between a pair of rails for various types of coding
schemes.
After observing the effect of limiting the bandwidth of a signal, its effect on the shape of
the signal was also observed. In starting the set-up, the Sequence Generator was used to be able
to generate the digital data signal because using sinewave and other input signals cannot be used
by themselves since they have irregular data stream which will be difficult to be have stable
sequence. The two things that were observed to cause the digital signal to change shape are the
change of the width of the input and phase shift which causes the code to change. Since the
digital signals can be distorted by bandwidth limiting, misinterpretation to the output signals
cannot be avoided.

CONCLUSION/S:
- After the experiment, In conclusion, the greater the bandwidth is, is required for digital
communication. Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred from one point to
another within a network in a given amount of time. In the experiment, using a low-pass filter
(LPF) to restore digital signals polish the signal of the steps, removing short-term fluctuations
while preserving the longer-term trend, which aids in the reconstruction of the original signal
waveform.

Traditional eye diagram measurement usually involves using a digital oscilloscope and
requires collecting a lot of data, which takes time. Thus, it is not suitable for real-time processing.
This will be improved for future systems using digital signal processing.

1. The vertical eye opening indicates the amount of difference in signal level that is
present to indicate the difference between one-bits and zero-bits. The bigger the difference the
easier it is to discriminate between one and zero. Of course this is affected significantly by noise
in the system.
2. The horizontal eye opening indicates the amount of jitter present in the signal. The
wider the eye opening is on this axis the less problem we are likely to have with jitter.
 3. The thickness of the band of signals at the zero-crossing point is also a good measure
of jitter in the signal. However, you need to be careful here as the sweep is usually triggered
from the receiver PLL and variations here are as much an indicator of the quality of the PLL as
they are of the signal itself!
4. The best indication of signal goodness is just the size of the eye opening itself. The
larger it is the easier it will be to detect the signal and the lower will be the error rate. When
the eye is nearly closed it will be very difficult or impossible to derive meaningful data from the
signal.
PROOF OF EXPERIMENTS