DTU

Computer Networks
B.Tech
Delhi Technological University
Module 1-3: Physical Layer Digital Transmission
Instructor: Divyashikha Sethia

Roadmap
• Line Coding
• Line Coding Schemes
• Block Coding
• Scrambling

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DIGITAL-TO-DIGITAL CONVERSION

•Data: Digital or Analog

•Signal: Digital or Analog

•How we can represent digital data by using digital signals?

• The conversion involves three techniques: line coding, block
coding, and scrambling.
•Line coding is always needed; block coding and scrambling
may or may not be needed.

Line Coding

• Process of converting digital data to digital signals

• Converts sequence of bits to digital signal

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Line coding and decoding

Sender encodes digital data into digital signal

Receiver decodes the digital signal back to digital data

Line Coding
Signal Element Vs Data Element
• Data element: is the smallest entity that can represent a
piece of information – bit

• Signal element: carries data element – is the shortest unit

timewise of a digital signal

Data element – what we need to send

Signal element - carrier

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Important Parameters
• Ratio r is the number of elements carried by each signal element

•Data rate: number of data elements (bits) per sec

•Signal rate: number of signal elements per sec ( pulse rate/ modulation rate/ baud
rate)

•Goal Increase data rate and decrease signal rate

•Relation between signal rate (S) and data rate (N):

S= c * N * 1/r baud
N: data rate in bps
c: case factor (worst,average,best –between 0 -1)
Case1: all 0’s / 1’s
Case2: alternating 0 and 1

Baud rate determines the bandwidth of the digital signal

Bandwidth which is range of frequencies is proportional to the signal rate (baud rate)

Bmin = c * N * 1/r Nmax = 1/c * B * r

Line Coding
Signal element vs data element

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Line Coding
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Data Rate Vs Signal Rate

• Data rate - number of data elements (bits) sent in 1 s – bps (bits per
sec)
• Signal rate - number of signal elements sent in 1 s – pulse rate,
modulation rte/ baud rate
 Objective: Increase data rate and decrease signal rate

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Line Coding
Baseline Wandering

• Receiver calculates running average of the received power

called baseline
• Incoming signal power is evaluated against this baseline to
determine value of data elements
• Long string of 0s / 1s cause drift on the baseline called
baseline wandering
• Makes difficult for receiver to decode correctly

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Line Coding - DC Component

• Digital signal consisting of transition in voltage to indicate the bit
pattern
• After line coding, signal may have zero frequency component in
spectrum of the signal, which is known as the direct-current (DC)
component.
• DC component in a signal is not desirable because the DC component
does not pass through some components of a communication system
such as a transformer.
• This leads to distortion of the signal and may create error at the output.
• The DC component also results in unwanted energy loss on the line.
• If voltage is constant for a while creates very low frequencies called
DC components that cause problems for system that cannot pass them
• Eg: telephone line cannot pass frequencies below 200 Hz

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Line Coding
Self –synchronization
• For correct interpretation of signals receiver bit intervals
must correspond to sender bit intervals
• Effect of lack of synchronization, receiver has a shorter bit
duration. Sender sends 10110001 and receiver interprets
110111000011

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Line Coding
Self-synchronizing signal
• Includes timing information in data that alert the receiver to
the beginning, middle and end of pulse.

• These points can reset the receiver’s clock if it is out of

synch

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Line Coding
• Characteristics:
- Self synchronizing
- Built-in Error Detection
- Immunity to Noise and Interference
- Complexity

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Line coding schemes

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Line coding schemes

Unipolar NRZ scheme
•All signal levels are on one side of the time axis
•NRZ (Non-Return-to-Zero) – positive volt – bit 1, and 0 volt – bit 0
•Signal does not return to 0 at middle of a bit
•It is very costly since the power is double as compared to polar NRZ
hence not used

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Line coding schemes

Polar Schemes - NRZ
•Voltages are both sides of axis, Volt positive:bit 0, negative: bit 1
•NRZ(Non-Return-to-Zero) – NRZ-L, NRZ-I
•NRZ-L : Level of volt determines the bit value
•NRZ-I: Change or lack change in volt indicates a bit value eg:
change in volt – bit1, no change in volt – bit 0

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Line Coding
Comparison of Polar NRZ Schemes
NRZ-L NRZ-I
Baseline Twice as severe if there is Problem occurs only
wandering long sequence of 0s or 1s for long sequence of
0s. Can be eliminated
Synchronization More serious due to long Less serious since
sequence of 0s &1s affected only by long
sequence of 0s
Sudden change Sudden change causes all Not an issue
in polarity 0s to be interpreted as 1s
& 1s to be interpreted as
0s
DC components Problem Problem
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NRZ Change in Polarity

Example two data wires are wrongly connected in each other's place.
-NRZ-L :all bit sequences will get reversed (B'coz voltage levels get
swapped).
-NRZ-I since bits are recognized by transition the bits will be
correctly interpreted

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Line Coding
Polar RZ scheme
• Solves the synchronization problem in NRZ scheme
• RZ – Return to Zero – signal do not change between bits but
during the bits.
• Signal goes to 0 in the middle of the bit
• No DC component

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Line Coding
Polar RZ scheme
• Disadvantage:
- Requires two signal changes to encode a bit hence
occupying more bandwidth
- Sudden change in polarity cause wrong interpretation of bit
- Complexity since uses three voltage levels hence not used

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Line Coding
Biphase schemes:
Manchester/ Differential Manchester

•Transition in the middle of the bit is used for synchronization

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Line Coding 23

Biphase schemes:
Simple Manchester
•Combines ides of RZ (transition in middle of bit) and NRZ-L

RZ
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Line Coding Biphase schemes:

Simple Manchester scheme

•Duration of bit divided into two halves

– volt remains at one level during first half
- moves to other level in the second half
•Transition in middle used for synchronization

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Line Coding
Biphase Scheme:Differential Manchester
•Combines ideas of RZ (transition in middle of bit) and NRZ-I

RZ

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Line Coding
Biphase:Differential Manchester
•– If next bit is 0 there is transition
- If next bit is 1 there is none
•Transition in middle provides synchronization

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Line Coding
Biphase schemes

• Overcome problems in NRZ-L and NRZ-I

• Advantages:
o No baseline wandering
o No DC component since each bit has positive and negative
volt values
• Disadvantage:
o Signal rate is double that for NRZ – transition during each
bit or additional transition at the end of each bit

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Line coding
Bipolar Scheme/Multilevel binary

• Use three voltage levels: positive, negative and zero

• Voltage level for one data elements is zero and other
element alternates between positive and negative
• Bipolar schemes: AMI and pseudoternary

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LINE CODING
Bipolar schemes: AMI and pseudoternary
•AMI (Alternate Mark Inversion) – alternate 1 inversion.
Zero volt – bit 0, Bit 1- represented by alternating positive and
negative voltages
•Pseudoternary – Bit 1 is zero voltage and 0 bit encoded as
alternating positive and negative voltages

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Line Coding
Bipolar Scheme

• Alternative to NRZ
• Same Signal rate as NRZ but no DC component because:
For long sequence of 1s volt alternates and for long
sequence of 0s volt is 0
• AMI – used for long distance communication but with
synchronization problems with long sequence of 0s

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Line coding
Multilevel Schemes
• Goal to increase number of bits per baud by encoding m
data patterns into a pattern of n n signal elements
• m data elements -> 2m data patterns
L different level -> Ln signal patterns

• 2m < Ln data patterns occupy only a subset of signal patterns

– can be used to prevent baseline wandering, provide
synchronization and error detection
• 2m > Ln not possible since some data patterns are left out

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Line coding
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mBnL schemes
• Pattern of m data elements is encoded as a pattern of n
signal elements in which 2m ≤ Ln.

B – Binary data
N – Length of signal pattern
L – number of levels
mBnL
/ \
Data pattern Signal Pattern

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Line coding
Multilevel: 2B1Q scheme
m:number of data elements = 2
N: number of signal element = 1
L = number of signal levels = 4
Uses data patterns of sizes 2 and encodes the 2-bit
patterns as 1 signal elements belonging to a four-
level signal

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Line coding
Multilevel: 2B1Q scheme
•Can send data 2 times faster than NRZ-L

•Four signal levels indicate receiver has to discern 4

different thresholds

•No redundant signal patterns since 22 = 41

•Used in DSL technology for high-speed Internet

connection

•Other schemes from book for further information

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Line Coding
Multiline Transmission: MLT-3
• Used three levels(+V,0,-V) and three transition rules to
move between the levels
1. Next bit is 0 -> no transition
2. Next bit is 1, current level is not 0 -> next level is 0
3. Next bit 1 and current level is 0, -> next level is the
opposite of the last nonzero level

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Multitransition:
MLT-3 scheme

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Multitransition: MLT-3 scheme

•Signal rate is same as NRZ-a but with greater complexity which

helps reduce the required bandwidth.
•Worst case scenario: seq of 1s.

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Line Coding
Summary of line coding schemes

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Block coding
• Gives redundancy and improves performance of line coding
by providing synchronization and inherent error detection
• Block of m bits changes to block of n bits n > m is referred
as mB/nB encoding technique

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Block Coding
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4B/5B
• NRZ-I has a good signal rate but has synchronization
problems long seq of 0s can make receiver loose synch

• Solution: change bit stream prior to encoding so that there

are no long streams of 0s with 4B/5B scheme

• Stream does not have more that 3 consecutive 0s

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Using block coding 4B/5B with

NRZ-I line coding scheme

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Block Coding 4B/5B

• Generates 5-bit output that replaces 4-bit input

• Has no more that one leading 0 and no more that two
trailing 0s
• Hence different groups have never more that 3 consecutive
0s
• 4 bits have 16 combinations, 5 bits have 32. Left 16
combinations are used for control purposes like error
detection

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4B/5B mapping codes

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Substitution in
4B/5B block coding

•Solves problem of synchronization

•Increases baud rate due to redundancy bits
•However does not solve the DC component problem

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8B/10B block encoding

•Group of 8 bits substituted by 10 bit code

•Provided greater error detection
•Is a combination of %B/6B and 3B/4B encoding to
simplify mapping

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Scrambling
• Biphase schemes not suitable for dedicated links in LANs nor
long distance communication due to large bandwidth
requirements.
• Block coding and NRZ line coding not suitable for long distance
communication due to DC component.
• Bipolar AMI has Narrow Bandwidth, No DC Component .
However long sequence of 0s upsets synch
• Use scrambling to substitute long 0 level pulses with
combination of other levels to provide synchronization
• Scrambling is done along with encoding

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AMI used with scrambling

Two techniques: B8ZS and HDB3

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Bipolar with 8-zero substitution (B8ZS)

B8ZS substitutes eight consecutive zeros with 000VB0VB.

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High Density bipolar 3-zero (HDB3)

• HDB3 substitutes four consecutive zeros with 000V or 00V

depending on the number of nonzero pulses after the last
substitution.
• Two substitutions for even number of nonzero pulses
• Rules: No of nonzero pulses after last subs is :
1. odd => subs pattern: 000V to make total number of
nonzero pulses even
2. even => sub pattern: B00V to make total number of
nonzero pulses even

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Different situations in HDB3 scrambling

technique

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Advantages of Digital transmission over

analog transmission
•Analog circuits require amplifiers, and each amplifier adds distortion and noise
to the signal. In contrast, digital amplifiers regenerate an exact signal,
eliminating cumulative errors.

• Voice, data, video, etc. can all by carried by digital circuits. What about
carrying digital signals over analog circuit? The modem example shows the
difficulties in carrying digital over analog. A simple encoding method is to use
constant voltage levels for a “1'' and a ``0''. Can lead to long periods where the
voltage does not change.

•Easier to multiplex large channel capacities with digital.

• Easy to apply encryption to digital data.
•Better integration if all signals are in one form. Can integrate voice, video and
•digital data.

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Self Study

Analog -> Digital conversion

Digital -> Analog conversion

Analog -> Analog conversion

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References
• Chapter 4: Digital Transmission, Forouzan
• Self Study:
- Chapter 4: Forouzan, 4.2 Analog to Digital Conversion,
4.3 Transmission modes
- Chapter 5: Analog Transmission

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THANKS

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