Computer Networks

Chapter 2- Physical Layer

• Asynchronous Communication
• Wireless transmission (electromagnetic spectrum)
• ISDN, ATM
• Cellular Radio
• Switching Techniques issues
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Asynchronous Communication
• in telecommunications, 
– asynchronous communication is transmission of data,
generally without the use of an external clock signal,
– where data can be transmitted intermittently rather than in a
steady stream.
– timing required to recover data from the communication 
• Definition
– Transmitter and receiver do not explicitly coordinate
each data transmission.
– Transmitter can wait long for transmission. (keyboard).
 Means no explicit info about where data bit begin and end
WCB/McGraw-Hill  The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 1998
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ISDN: Integrated Services Digital Network

• (ISDN) is a set of communication

standards for simultaneous digital
transmission
of voice, video, data, and other
network services over the
traditional circuits of the PSTN
public switched telephone network
in telecommunications, 
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ISDN: Integrated Services Digital Network

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•  PSTN is the world’s collection of interconnected voice-

oriented public telephone networks
• called circuit-switched telephone network.
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ATM

• Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) is a switching

technique used by telecommunication networks
• it uses asynchronous time-division multiplexing to encode
data into small, fixed-sized cells.
• This is different from Ethernet or internet
• Uses fixed length packets called cells,
• Achieves fast speed by avoiding flow control and error
checking.
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Cellular Radio
personal communications systems 
in which the mobile receiver switches 
frequencies automatically as it passes 
from one cell to another

• cellular network or mobile network is a communication

network where the last link is wireless
• network is distributed over land areas called "cells“
• each cell served by at least one fixed-location transceiver
•  cell sites or base transceiver stations. (BTS-BSS)
• cell with the network coverage which can be used for
transmission of voice, data, and other types of content.
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Functionalities of Physical layer

• “responsible for moving individual bits from one
node to next node”
• Transmission Media
• Types of encoding
• Data rate (nr. of bits sent/second)
• Synchronization of bits
• Line configuration (point to point / multiport)
• Types of topologies (mesh, star bus, ring)
• Transmission mode (Simplex, Duplex-Half/full)
 End of session (Ch-2, Physical layer)

?
Thanks.

Self exercise
Q- what is Switching? Describe Circuit switching,
message switching, packet switching