Digital Communication

Zalak Patel

Indus University
Electronics and Communication Engineering Department
Course Aim
 To introduce principles of Digital communication systems and methods used in
modulating and demodulating digital signals in order to carry information from a
source to a destination.
Books
Text Books:
“Modern Digital and analog communication system” by B.P.Lathi .Zhi Ding
(international 4th Edition), OXFORD university press.

Reference Books:
1) An Introduction to Analog and Digital Communications by Simon Haykin,
Wiley India.

2) Principle of communication system by Taub . Schilling (2nd Edition), TATA

McGRAW-HILL.

3) Digital communication-Theory, Techniques and Applications by R. N. Mutagi,

2nd edition,OXFORD university press.
Communication
 Main purpose of communication is to transfer information from a
source to a recipient via a channel or medium.

 Basic block diagram of a communication system:

Source Transmitter Channel Receiver

Recipient
Detailed Block Diagram
Brief Description
 Source: analog or digital data
 Transmitter: transducer, amplifier, modulator, oscillator, power
amplifier, antenna
 Channel: e.g. cable, optical fibre, free space
 Receiver: antenna, amplifier, demodulator, oscillator, power
amplifier, transducer
 Recipient: e.g. person, (loud) speaker, computer
Information Representation

 Types of information
Voice, data, video, music, email etc.

 Communication system converts information into electrical/ electromagnetic/optical signals

appropriate for the transmission medium.

 Analog systems convert analog message into signals that can propagate through the channel.

 Digital systems convert bits(digits, symbols) into signals.

 Computers naturally generate information as characters/bits.

 Most information can be converted into bits.
 Analog signals can be converted into bits (digital data) by sampling and quantizing (A/D
conversion).
Type of data:
Analog and Digital
 Data can be analog or digital.
 The term analog data refers to information that is continuous; digital data refers to
information that has discrete states.
Type of Signals:
Analog and Digital Signals

Amplitude
Analog signal
Continuous time
v(t)
Continuous amplitude

time

Amplitude
Digital signal
V1
Discrete time,
Discrete amplitude
V2
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 time
Types of Channels (Media)
 Wireline (wired)
 Telephony (voice, fax, modem, DSL)
 Ethernet/LAN
 Cable TV
 Backplane copper links

 Wireless (Electromagnetic)
 Over the air communication
 Radio and TV broadcast
 WLAN
 Cellular
 Radar

 Fiber optics
 High speed long haul data communication
 High traffic data transfer
Type of Communication Systems:

 Public Switched Telephone Network (landline, fax,modem)

 Satellite & RADAR systems
 Radio,TV broadcasting
 Cellular phones, Smart phones- mobile communication
 Computer networks (LANs, WANs, WLANs)
Brief Chronology of Communication Systems

 1844 Telegraph
 1876 Telephony
 1904 Radio
 1923-1938 Television
 1936 Armstrong’s case of FM radio
 1938-1945 World War II Radar and microwave systems
 1948-1950 Information Theory and coding. C. E. Shannon
 1962 Satellite communications begins with Telstar I.
 1962-1966 High Speed digital communication
 1972 Motorola develops cellular telephone
Types of Signal Transmission
 Advantages of Digital Signals &
Digital Communication systems

 Digital signals can be regenerated perfectly.

 Digital modulators are more power and bandwidth efficient.

 Efficient trade-off between power and bandwidth.

 Signal compression is possible.

 Error detection and correction is possible by coding the digital

signal which yield high fidelity and privacy.

 Common signal format for all types of signals.

 Digital hardware flexibility and miniaturization through VLSI, EPLD,

DSP, FPGA technology.
 Advantges of Digital Communication Systems

 Digital communication is more rugged than analog communication due to high

immunity of digital signal to noise and distortion.

 The use of regenerative repeater will detect the pulses and transmit the new, clean
pulses to next repeater station which does the same process. If repaters are closely
spaced then noise & distortions will be within limits and hence pulses can be
detected correctly. So digital messages can be transmitted over long distance with
relaibilty.

 It is easier and more efficient to multiplex several digital signals.

 Digital signal storage is easy and inexpensive. It has ability to search and select
information from distant electronics storehouses.

 Reproduction with digital message is reliable without deterioration. e.g films vs CD

 Signal regeneration

 Analog signal has infinite amplitudes and continuous time, hence, cannot be
regenerated perfectly.

 Signal impairments during transmission

 Distortion
 Attenuation
 Addition of thermal noise

 Digital signal has finite levels and change only at discrete intervals, hence, easy to
regenerate.
Digital Signal Regeneration
Amplitude
Original Received

Time
(a)
Sampling
Amplitude instants
Detection
threshold
Time
(b)

Amplitude Regenerated
waveform

(c) Time
 Power efficiency of digital modulators

 Quality of received signal depends on the carrier to noise ratio at the receiver
input.

 Quality is measured in terms of signal-to-noise ratio for analog signals.

 Quality is measured in terms of bit error ratio for digital signals.

 Signal quality can be traded with the bandwidth.

 Tradeoff is more efficient with digital modulation.

 Spectral efficiency of digital modulators

 With analog modulation the RF signal bandwidth is equal or more than the signal
bandwidth.
 With digital modulation the RF signal bandwidth can be varied using different levels of
modulation.
 With higher level of modulation the bandwidth can be reduced requiring less RF
transmission bandwidth.
 Signal compression

 Bandwidth of an analog signal cannot be reduced.

 Bandwidth of a digital signal can be reduced using compression techniques.

 A signal generally has predictable (redundant) information and also contains

more information than can be perceived.

 Signal can be compressed in the digital domain by

 removing the redundancy in the signal
 removing unperceivable components in the signal
 Multiplexing
 Capacity of practical channel transmitting data is much larger than data rate if individual
sources.

 to utilize channel capacity effectively, several sources can be combined though a digital
multiplexer using the process of inetrleaving.

 Thus a channel is time shared by several messages simultaneously.

(Time Division multiplexing)
 Unification of Signals

 All digital signals have uniform characteristics (data 0 or 1).

 Analog waveforms differ with the signal they represent.

 Signal processing differs with the analog signals.

 With digital signals the processing is uniform irrespective of the original signal.

 Digital speech, audio, video and data have identical waveforms differing only in
the data rate.

 Digital systems are hence, more flexible.

 Performance of digital systems

 Digital circuits, being switching circuits, consume less power.

 Digital circuit behavior is less susceptible to variations in power supply,

temperature, ageing and tolerance in component values.

 Behavior of digital systems is easily predictable, hence, systems are more reliable.

 Digital systems are easy to design with many design tools available.

 Digital circuits are more dense and hence, systems can be compact.
 Digital technology

 Due to low power consumption more circuit can be put on smaller silicon chip
area.

 Very large scale integrated circuits

 Behavior of digital systems is easily predictable, hence, systems are more

reliable.

 Digital systems are easy to design with many design tools available.

 Digital circuits are more dense and hence, systems can be compact
Digital Communication Systems

• The process of efficiently converting the output of either an analog or a digital source into a
sequence of binary digits is called source encoding or data compression.
• The source encoder compresses the data into minimum number of bits.

• The process of adding patterns of redundancy (extra bits) into the transmission path in order to
lower the error rate is called channel coding.
• The channel coder performs error control coding.
Typical Digital Communication System

Analog Source
Signal coder
Source Mux Channel Digital
coder modulator

Access RF sub-
control system

Channel Digital
Demux decoder
Signal demodulator
Source
sink decoder

Digital
Analog Analog