PULSECODE MODULATION

Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) was pioneered by the

British engineer Alec Reeves in 1937.
The first transmission of a message using PCM was in
1943 during the World War II.
Pulse code modulation is the heart of technology in
communications in today’s digital world.
It’s a process in which analog signals are converted to
digital form.
The analog signal is represented by a series of pulses and
non-pulses (1 or 0 respectively).
The magnitude of signal is regularly sampled in uniform
intervals, and then quantized in a series of binaries.
Pulse Code Modulation is known as a digital pulse
nodulation technique. (pulse digital modulation)
The PCM quite complex compared to the analog pulse
modulation techniques (PAM, PWM and PPM) in the
sense that the message signal is subjected to a great
number of operations.

PCM offers a method of overcoming some of the

disadvantages of other type of pulse modulation
In PCM analog information is converted into a binary
sequence, i.e., 1s and 0s.
The above figure shows an example of PCM output with
respect to instantaneous values of a given sine wave.
 Digitizing an analog signal into a digital,
requires two basic steps.

1.Sampling
2. Quantization

Sampling is done on x axis. It is the conversion of x axis

(infinite values) to digital values
 Analog
Sampling of signals Signal
 What is
Sampling ?

The below
figure shows
sampling of a
signal.

Sampling is defined as, “The process of measuring the instantaneous

values of continuous-time signal in a discrete form.”
Sample is a piece of data taken from the whole data which is
continuous in the time domain.
x(t) –Continuous time signal
xs(t)-Sampled signal.
 To discretize the signals, the gap between the samples
should be fixed. The gap can be termed as a  sampling
period Ts.
Or Time elapsed between sample to sample.
Ts is referred to as the sampling interval.
Sampling Frequency = 1/Ts = fs
Ts -is the sampling time,
fs - is the sampling frequency
Sampling frequency is the reciprocal of the sampling
period.
This sampling frequency, can be simply called
as Sampling rate.

The sampling rate denotes the number of samples taken

per second, or for a finite set of values
For an analog signal to be reconstructed from the digitized
signal, the sampling rate should be highly considered.

The rate of sampling should be such that the data in the

message signal should neither be lost nor it should get
over-lapped. Hence, a rate was fixed for this, called as
Nyquist rate.
 Nyquist Rate

The rate of sampling should be such that the data in the

message signal should neither be lost nor it should get
over-lapped.
Hence, a rate was fixed for this, called as Nyquist rate.
Suppose that a signal is band-limited with no frequency
components higher than W Hertz.
That means, W is the highest frequency.

For such a signal, for effective reproduction of the

original signal, the sampling rate should be twice the
highest frequency.
Which means, fS=2WfS= 2W
Where,
•fS is the sampling rate
•W is the highest frequency
According to the Nyquist theorem, the sampling rate must
be at least 2 times the highest frequency contained in the
signal.
 Quantization –Basic ideas
The digitization of analog signals involves the rounding
off of the values which are approximately equal to the
analog values.
The method of sampling chooses a few points on the
analog signal and then these points are joined to round off
the value to a near stabilized value. Such a process is
called as Quantization.

Signal amplitude -6.8V

It is not sent as 6,8V
But it is simply as 7V - Quantization
 Quantizing an Analog Signal
The following figure represents an analog signal. This
signal to get converted into digital, has to undergo
sampling and quantizing.

Analog signal
Quantization is representing the sampled values of the
amplitude by a finite set of levels, which means
converting a continuous-amplitude sample into a
discrete-time signal.
 Quantization of analog signal is shown in figure.

The blue line represents analog signal while the brown

one represents the quantized signal.
Both sampling and quantization result in the loss of
information. The quality of a Quantizer output depends
upon the number of quantization levels used.
The following figure shows the resultant quantized
signal which is the digital form for the given analog
signal.
 Principle of PCM

In PCM the total amplitude range of an information signal

is divided into a number of standard levels by a process
called quantization process. Shown in figure.
The practical implementation of PCM makes use
of other processes.
The processes are carried out in the order in
which they appear below.
Sampling
Quantizing
Encoding