DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS

PCM - LINE CODING

Prepared by : Eng. Mohammad Al-Nairat

 Line coding
 Digital data ( a sequence of binary digits) can be transmitted by various pulse waveforms which

are sometimes called line codes.

 Line coding
 The reason for the large selection relates to the differences in performance that characterize each

waveform.

 Choosing a PCM for a particular application depends on the following parameters:

1) DC component:
 Quantization
 
 Let the amplitude range of the continuous signal be partitioned into L intervals, where the

interval, denoted by , is determined by the decision levels (also called the threshold levels) and :

 The spacing between two adjacent decision levels is called the step-size.

 If the step-size is the same for each interval, then the quantizer is called a uniform quantizer,

otherwise the quantizer is nonuniform.

 Uniform Quantization
 The input–output characteristic of the quantizer (or quantizer characteristic) is a staircase

function.
Uniform Quantization
 Uniform Quantization
 
 The classification whether a characteristic is midtread or midrise depends on whether the origin

lies in the middle of a tread, or a rise of the staircase characteristic.

 For both characteristics, the decision levels are equally spaced and the target level is the midpoint

of the interval:

 The quantization process always introduces an error and the performance of a quantizer is usually

evaluated in terms of its SNR.

 Uniform Quantization
 
 Typically, the input of the quantizer can be modeled as a zero-mean RV with some PDF .

 Furthermore, assume that the amplitude range of is , that the uniform quantizer is of midrise

type, and that the number of quantization levels is .

 Then the quantization step-size is given by:

Uniform Quantization
Uniform Quantization
Uniform Quantization
 Uniform Quantization
 
 Let be the error introduced by the quantizer, then .

 If the step-size is sufficiently small (i.e., the number of quantization intervals is sufficiently

large), then it is reasonable to assume that the quantization error is a uniform random variable

over the range .

 The PDF of the random variable is given by:

Uniform Quantization
 Uniform Quantization
 
 The mean of the quantization error is zero.

 Its variance can be calculated as follows:

 The number of quantization levels is usually chosen to be a power of , i.e. , where is the number

of bits needed to represent each target level.

 The expression for the variance of the quantization error:

 Uniform Quantization
 
 Since the message sample is a zero-mean RV whose PDF is , the average power of the message is

equal to the variance of m, i.e.,

 Therefore, the SNRq can be expressed as:

 Non-uniform Quantization
 As the distribution of the message signal is close to uniform, the uniform quantizer works well.

 However, for certain signals such as voice, the input distribution is far from uniform.

For a voice signal, in particular, there exists a higher probability for smaller amplitudes

(corresponding to silent periods and soft speech) and a lower probability for larger amplitudes
(corresponding to loud speech).

 Therefore it is more efficient to design a quantizer with more quantization regions at lower

amplitudes and less quantization regions at larger amplitudes to overcome the variations in power
levels that the quantizer sees at its input.
 Non-uniform Quantization
 The resulting quantizer would be, in essence, a nonuniform quantizer having quantization regions

of various sizes.
Non-uniform Quantization
 The usual and robust method for performing nonuniform quantization is:

1) Pass the continuous samples through a monotonic nonlinearity called a compressor that

compresses the large amplitudes (which essentially reduces the dynamic range of the signal)
then the compressed signal is applied to a uniform quantizer.

2) At the receiving end, the inverse of compression is carried out by the expander to obtain the

sampled values.

 The combination of a compressor and an expander is called a compander.

Non-uniform Quantization
Non-uniform Quantization
Non-uniform Quantization
PCM Bandwidth
PCM Bandwidth
PCM Bandwidth
PCM Bandwidth