EE462: AI Enabled

Digital Communications
Week # 5

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 Contents

• Signal Space and Vector Representation of Signals

• Receiver Design
• Match Filter

The contents of this material are based on

• Chapter 3, Sklar, B., 2001. Digital communications (Vol. 2, p. 1011). Upper Saddle
River, NJ, USA:: Prentice hall.

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 Signal Space
Introduction
• What is a signal space?
• Vector representations of signals in an -dimensional orthogonal space
• Why do we need a signal space?
• It is a means to convert signals to vectors and vice versa.
• It is a means to calculate signal energy and Euclidean distances between signals.
• Why are we interested in Euclidean distances between signals?
• For detection purposes: The received signal is transformed to a received vectors. The
signal which has the minimum distance to the received signal is estimated as the
transmitted signal.

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 Signal Space
Introduction
Transmitted signal
 2 (t ) alternatives
s1  (a11 , a12 )

 1 (t )
z  ( z1 , z 2 )
Received signal at
matched filter output
s 3  (a31 , a32 )

s 2  (a21 , a22 )

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 Signal Space
Introduction
• To form a signal space, first we need to know the inner product between two
signals (functions):
• Inner (scalar) product:

 x(t ), y (t )  
*
x (t ) y (t )dt

= cross-correlation between 𝑥(𝑡) and 𝑦(𝑡)

• Properties of inner product:

 ax(t ), y (t )  a  x(t ), y (t ) 
 x(t ), ay (t )  a *  x(t ), y (t ) 
 x(t )  y (t ), z (t )  x(t ), z (t )    y (t ), z (t )  5
 Signal Space
Euclidean Distances
• The distance in signal space is measure by calculating the norm.
• What is norm?
• Norm of a signal:


2
x(t )   x(t ), x(t )   x(t ) dt  E x

= “length” of x(t)
ax(t )  a x(t )

• Norm between two signals:

d x , y  x(t )  y (t )

• We refer to the norm between two signals as the Euclidean distance between two signals.
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 Signal Space
Example of distances in signal space

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Signal Space
Basis Functions

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 Signal Space
Example of an orthonormal basis

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 Signal Space
Linear Combinations (as in Fourier Series)

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Signal Space
Conversions

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 Signal Space
Example of projecting signals to an
orthonormal signal space

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 Signal Space
Gram-Schmidt procedure
• To find an orthonormal basis functions for a given set of signals,
the Gram-Schmidt procedure can be used.
• Gram-Schmidt procedure:
• Given a signal set si (t )iM1 , compute an orthonormal basis  (t ) j
N
j 1

1. Define  1 (t )  s1 (t ) / E1  s1 (t ) / s1 (t )
i 1
2. For i  2,..., M compute di (t )  si (t )    si (t ), j (t )   j (t )
If d i (t )  0 let  i (t )  di (t ) / di (t ) j 1

If d i (t )  0 , do not assign any basis function.

3. Renumber the basis functions such that basis is  1 (t ), 2 (t ),..., N (t )
This is only necessary if d i (t )  0 for any in step 2.
Note that NM 13
 Signal Space
Example of Gram-Schmidt procedure

Find the basis functions and plot the signal

space for the following transmitted signals:

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 Demodulation and Detection
Baseband Signal
mi Pulse g i (t ) Bandpass si (t )
Format M-ary modulation
modulate modulate
i  1,, M
channel
transmitted symbol hc (t )
estimated symbol n(t )
Demod.
Format Detect
m̂i z (T ) & sample r (t )

• For demodulation we often consider baseband signal transmission,

• Detection is unaffected by heterodyning
• Passband signals are heterodyned to baseband signals at the detection of symbols.
• Equivalence theorem:
• Performing bandpass linear signal processing followed by heterodyning the signal to the baseband,
yields the same results as heterodyning the bandpass signal to the baseband , followed by a baseband
linear signal processing. 15
 Demodulation and Detection
Baseband Signal
mi Pulse g i (t ) Bandpass si (t )
Format M-ary modulation
modulate modulate i  1, , M
channel
transmitted symbol hc (t )
estimated symbol n(t )
Demod.
Format Detect
m̂i z (T ) & sample r (t )

Major sources of errors:

• Thermal noise (AWGN)
• disturbs the signal in an additive fashion (Additive)
• has flat spectral density for all frequencies of interest (White)
• is modeled by Gaussian random process (Gaussian Noise)
• Inter-Symbol Interference (ISI)
• Due to the filtering effect of transmitter, channel and receiver, symbols are “smeared”. 16
Demodulation and Detection
Baseband Signal

hc (t )   (t )  0.5 (t  0.75T )

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 Demodulation and Detection
Receiver tasks
• Demodulation and sampling:
• Waveform recovery and preparing the received signal for detection:
• Improving the signal power to the noise power (SNR) using matched filter
• Reducing ISI using equalizer
• Sampling the recovered waveform
• Detection:
• Estimate the transmitted symbol based on the received sample

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 Demodulation and Detection
Receiver tasks
Step 1 – waveform to sample transformation Step 2 – decision making

Demodulate & Sample Detect

z (T ) Threshold m̂i
r (t ) Frequency Receiving Equalizing
comparison
down-conversion filter filter

For bandpass signals Compensation for

channel induced ISI

Received waveform Baseband pulse

Baseband pulse Sample
(possibly distored)
(test statistic)

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 Demodulation and Detection
Steps in designing the receiver
• Find optimum solution for receiver design with the
following goals:
1. Maximize SNR
2. Minimize ISI
• Steps in design:
• Model the received signal
• Find separate solutions for each of the goals.
• First, we focus on designing a receiver which maximizes the
SNR.

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 Demodulation and Detection
Design the receiver filter to maximize the SNR

• Design the receiver filter to maximize the • Simplify the model: Received signal in
SNR AWGN

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 Demodulation and Detection
Matched filter receiver
• Matched Filter is a linear filter designed to provide maximum SNR.
• Assumption is that s(n) is known

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Demodulation and Detection
Example of matched filter

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 Demodulation and Detection
Matched filter receiver

Now, suppose s1 is transmitted, then

where Rs1(t-T) and Rns1(t-T) are the

autocorrelation and the cross-correlation,
respectively. 24
 Demodulation and Detection
Matched filter receiver

Similarly,

• If s1 and s2 are orthogonal (This is the case for orthogonal detection of FSK, PSK, as we will
see later), Then Rs1s2(0)=0, and Rns1(0)=0 if the signal and the noise is uncorrelated with
zero mean.
• Same thing for Rns2(0)=0.
• If they are not, then
• Similarly, if s2(t) is transmitted, then
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 Demodulation and Detection
Matched filter receiver

If s1 and s2 are not orthogonal, or we

could not design a “perfect” matched
filter, then we let

The decision rule is where is defined

as follows, by the designer.
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 Demodulation and Detection
Correlator receiver

Bank of M correlators s 1 (t )
T z1 (T )
0
 z1 
r (t )    z z Correlators output:
s  M (t )   Observation vector

T zM 
0 z M (T )

z  ( z1 (T ), z 2 (T ),..., z M (T ))  ( z1 , z 2 ,..., z M )
T
zi   r (t )si (t )dt i  1,..., M
0 27
 Demodulation and Detection
Error Performance and
Calculating the Bit Error Rate (BER)
BER is determined by the average number of errors in transmitting a long bit stream,

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Demodulation and Detection
Error Performance and
Calculating the Bit Error Rate (BER)

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Demodulation and Detection
Error Performance and
Calculating the Bit Error Rate (BER)

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 Demodulation and Detection
Computing Noise Variance of AWGN

The spectral density at the output of the

matched filter is

where E is the energy per

bit. It is denoted Eb.
Therefore

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Error probability Performance of Binary signaling
1. Unipolar signaling

s1(t) – s2(t) = A and r(t) = s1(t) + n(t).

Therefore,

Notice that a2(T) = 0. The threshold is

Notice that the average bit energy is Eb = A2T/2 and the energy
difference signal Ed = A2T. The probability of error is given by
2.Bipolar Signaling

The energy difference Ed is given by:

Where the average energy per bit is Eb = A2T.

 0
10
unipolar
Bipolar
-1
10

-2
10
Bit Error probability, PB

-3
10

-4
10

-5 3 dB
10

-6
10

-7
10
0 5 10 15
Eb/N0 in dB
 The Basic SNR Parameter for
Digital Communication Systems
Eb/No
In analog communication, we are familiar with average signal power to average noise
power ratio (S/N or SNR).
In digital communication, we often use Eb/N0, a normalized version of SNR. Eb is bit
energy. N0 is the noise power spectral density. Let Tb and Rb be the bit time interval
and bit rate, respectively. Then

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