Digital Transmission

Digital Communications - PRELIM

ECE 502

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 Learning Outcomes

After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

❑ Compare analog and digital communication techniques and discuss the advantages of each.
❑ Calculate the minimum sampling rate for a signal and explain the necessity for sampling at that rate or
above.
❑ Describe the common types of analog pulse modulation.
❑ Describe pulse-code modulation and calculate the number of quantizing levels, the bit rate, and the
dynamic range for PCM systems.
❑ Explain companding, show how it is accomplished, and explain its effects.
❑ Describe the coding and decoding of a PCM signal.
❑ Describe differential PCM and explain its operation and advantages.
❑ Describe delta modulation and explain the advantages of adaptive delta modulation.
❑ Distinguish between lossless and lossy compression and provide examples of each.
 electronic communications is the transmission, reception, and processing of
information with the use of electronic circuits.

Information is defined as knowledge or intelligence that is communicated (i.e.,

transmitted or received) between two or more points.

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 Digital communications

Digital Modulation
Or Digital Transmission
Digital Radio
the carrier facility could be a require a physical facility between the
transmitter and receiver, such as a metallic wire
physical cable, or it could be
pair, a coaxial cable, or an optical fiber cable.
free space.

Kurose, J and Ross, K, Computer Networking, 6th ed, ©2013

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 Definition

digital transmission is the transmittal of digital signals between two

or more points in a communications system. The

a physical facility, such as a pair of wires, coaxial cable, or an optical fiber cable, is
required to interconnect the various points within the system.

TRUE OR FALSE:
Digital pulses cannot be propagated through a wireless transmission
system, such as Earth’s atmosphere or free space (vacuum).

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 Advantages of Digital Transmission

❑ noise immunity

❑ ease of processing,

❑ ease of multiplexing,

❑ simpler to measure and evaluate

❑ transmission errors can be detected and corrected more easily and more
accurately

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 Disadvantages of Digital Transmission

❑ requires significantly more bandwidth

*Bandwidth is one of the most important aspects of any communications system because it is costly and
limited.

❑ additional encoding and decoding circuitry

❑ requires precise time synchronization between the clocks in the transmitters and
receivers

❑ incompatible with older analog transmission systems

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 PULSE MODULATION

Pulse modulation consists essentially of sampling analog information signals and

then converting those samples into discrete pulses and transporting the pulses from
a source to a destination over a physical transmission medium.

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 PULSE MODULATION

ANALOG DIGITAL

PULSE AMPLITUDE PULSE CODE

MODULATION MODULATION

PULSE POSITION
DELTA MODULATION
MODULATION

PULSE DURATION ADAPTIVE DELTA

MODULATION MODULATION

Differential PCM
 PULSE WIDTH MODULATION (PWM)

PWM is sometimes called pulse

duration modulation (PDM) or pulse
length modulation (PLM), as the width
(active portion of the duty cycle) of a
constant amplitude pulse is varied
proportional to the amplitude of the
analog signal at the time the signal is
sampled.

Tomasi,Wayne, Advanced Electronic Communication System, 6th ed, © 2014

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 PULSE POSITION MODULATION (PPM)

PPM, the position of a constant-

width pulse within a prescribed time
slot is varied
according to the amplitude of the
sample of the analog signal

Tomasi,Wayne, Advanced Electronic Communication System, 6 th ed, © 2014

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 PULSE AMPLITUDE MODULATION (PAM)

PAM, the amplitude of a constant

width, constant-position pulse is
varied according to the amplitude
of the sample of the analog
signal.

Tomasi,Wayne, Advanced Electronic Communication System, 6th ed, © 2014

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 PULSE CODE MODULATION (PCM)
The term pulse code modulation is somewhat of a misnomer, as it is not really a type of
modulation but rather a form of digitally coding analog signals.

Alex H. Reeves is credited with inventing PCM in 1937 while working for
AT&T at its Paris laboratories.

PCM is the only digitally encoded modulation technique

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PULSE CODE MODULATION (PCM)
 PCM PROCESS

Analog Signal Discrete Signal Digital Signal

101101
SAMPLING QUANTIZATION ENCODING

Time: Continuous Time: Discrete Time: Discrete

Amplitude: Continuous Amplitude: Continuous Amplitude: Discrete
   

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 SAMPLING

Blake, Roy, Electronics Communication System, 2 nd ed

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 SAMPLING RATE
In 1928, Harry Nyquist showed mathematically that it is possible to reconstruct a
band-limited analog signal from periodic samples, as long as the sampling rate is
at least twice the frequency of the highest-frequency component of the signal.

If the sampling rate is too low, a form of distortion called aliasing or foldover
distortion is produced

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 Aliasing or Foldover Distortion

djaamora@gmail.com Blake, Roy, Electronics Communication System, 2 nd ed

 Example
Find the Nyquist rate and Nyquist interval for the following signals:

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cosAcosB =1/2 [cos(A+B)+cos(A-B]
 Quantization

Quantization is the process of converting an

infinite number of possibilities to a finite
number of conditions

Assigning PCM codes to absolute magnitudes is

called quantizing

The codes currently used for PCM are sign-

magnitude codes, where the most significant bit
(MSB) is the sign bit and the remaining bits are used
for magnitude.

Tomasi,Wayne, Advanced Electronic Communication System, 6 th ed, © 2014

Quantization
Quantization and the Folded Binary Code in PCM

Tomasi,Wayne, Advanced Electronic Communication System, 6th ed, © 2014

The magnitude difference between adjacent steps is called the quantization interval or quantum. This type of code is
called a folded binary code because the codes on the bottom half of the table are a mirror image of the codes on the
top half, except for the sign bit.

The smaller the magnitude of a quantum, the better (smaller) the resolution and the more accurately the
quantized signal will resemble the original analog sample.
Quantization and the Folded Binary Code
Tomasi,Wayne, Advanced Electronic Communication System, 6 th ed, © 2014

The magnitude of a quantum is also called the resolution.

n = number of bits in a PCM code, excluding the sign bit

The leftmost bit is the sign bit (1=+ and 0= - ), and the two rightmost bits represent magnitude.

❑ The 0-V codes each have an input range equal to only one-half a quantum.
 Example

Input Signal Subrange (V) Binary Code

 Example
maximum quantization error

Sampled Analog Value 0 0.6 0.95 0.95 0.6 0 -0.6 -0.95 -0.95 -0.6 0

Quantized Level
Binary Equivalent Code
Quantization error

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 Dynamic Range
The number of PCM bits transmitted per sample is determined by several variables, including
maximum allowable input amplitude, resolution, and dynamic range.

Dynamic Range (DR) is the ratio of the largest possible magnitude to the smallest possible
magnitude (other than 0 V) that can be decoded by the digital-to-analog converter in the receiver.

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 Quantization Error or Noise
❑ any round-off errors in the transmitted signal are
reproduced when the code is converted back to
analog in the receiver. This error is called the
quantization error (Qe).

❑ The quantization error is equivalent to additive

white noise as it alters the signal amplitude

Tomasi,Wayne, Advanced Electronic Communication System, 6 th ed, © 2014

❑ quantization error is also called quantization noise (Qn).

❑ The maximum magnitude for the quantization error is equal to one-half a quantum

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 Coding Efficiency

❑ Coding efficiency is a numerical indication of how efficiently a PCM code is

utilized.

❑ Coding efficiency is the ratio of the minimum number of bits required to achieve
a certain dynamic range to the actual number of PCM bits used.

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 SIGNAL-TO-QUANTIZATION NOISE RATIO

❑ The maximum quantization noise is half the resolution (quantum value). The worst
possible signal voltage-to-quantization noise voltage ratio (SQR) occurs when the
input signal is at its minimum amplitude

the signal power-to-quantizing noise power ratio (also called signal-to-distortion ratio or signal-
to-noise ratio) is determined by the following formula:
 COMPANDING
❑ Companding is the process of
compressing and then expanding.
❑ With companded systems, the higher-
amplitude analog signals are compressed
(amplified less than the lower-amplitude
signals) prior to transmission and then
expanded (amplified more than the
lower-amplitude signals) in the receiver.
❑ Companding is a means of improving the
dynamic range of a communications
system.
ANALOG COMPANDING
 ANALOG COMPANDING

   

Europe

The most recent PCM systems use an eight-bit

code and a μ=255, A=87.6
DIGITAL COMPANDING
 DIGITAL COMPANDING
The most recent digitally compressed PCM systems use a 12-bit linear PCM code and an eight-bit
compressed PCM code.
 EXAMPLE
Determine the 12-bit linear
code, the eight-bit
compressed code, the
decoded 12-bit code, the
quantization error, and the
compression error for a
resolution of 0.01V and
analog sample voltages of (a)
+0.053 V, (b) -0.318 V, and
(c) +10.234 V

The segment number in the eight-bit code is determined by counting the number of leading 0s in the 11-bit
magnitude portion of the linear code beginning with the most significant bit. Subtract the number of leading
0s (not to exceed 7) from 7. The result
is the segment number, which is converted to a three-bit binary number and inserted into
the eight-bit compressed code as the segment identifier.
Digital Compression Error
 PCM LINE SPEED
❑ Line speed is simply the data rate at which serial PCM bits are clocked out of the
PCM encoder onto the transmission line.
❑ Line speed is dependent on the sample rate and the number of bits in the
compressed PCM code.

EXAMPLE For a single-channel PCM system with a sample rate fs 6000 samples per second and a
seven-bit compressed PCM code, determine the line speed:
 DELTA MODULATION PCM
Delta modulation uses a single-bit PCM code to achieve digital transmission of analog signals. If the
current sample is smaller than the previous sample, a logic 0 is transmitted. If the current sample is
larger than the previous sample, a logic 1 is transmitted.
 two problems associated with delta modulation
Slope overload
❑ happens when the analog input signal changes at a
faster rate than the DAC can maintain
❑ The slope of the analog signal is greater than the
delta modulator can maintain and is called slope
overload.
❑ Increasing the clock frequency and increase the
magnitude of the minimum step size reduces the
probability of slope overload occurring
Granular noise
❑ when the original analog input signal has a
relatively constant amplitude, the reconstructed
signal has variations that were not present in the
original signal.
❑ Granular noise in delta modulation is analogous
to quantization noise in conventional PCM.
❑ Granular noise can be reduced by:
✔ decreasing the step size
✔ a small resolution is needed
 ADAPTIVE DELTA MODULATION PCM
Adaptive delta modulation is a delta modulation system where the step size of the DAC is automatically
varied, depending on the amplitude characteristics of the analog input signal.

A common algorithm for an adaptive delta modulator is when three consecutive 1s or 0s occur, the step
size of the DAC is increased or decreased by a factor of 1.5
 Differential PCM
❑ Differential pulse code modulation (DPCM) is designed specifically to take
advantage of the sample-to-sample redundancies in typical speech
waveforms.
❑ With DPCM, the difference in the amplitude of two successive samples is
transmitted rather than the actual sample.
❑ Because the range of sample differences is typically less than the range of
individual samples, fewer bits are required for DPCM than conventional
PCM.