Physical Layer

Dr. Sanjay P. Ahuja, Ph.D.

Fidelity National Financial Distinguished Professor of CIS
School of Computing, UNF
 Multiplexing
 Transmission channels are expensive. It is often that two communicating entities do not
fully utilize the full capacity of a channel. For efficiency, the capacity is shared. This is
called multiplexing.

 There are n inputs to a multiplexer. The multiplexer is connected by a single data link to a
de-multiplexer. The link is able to carry n separate channels of data.

 The mux combines data from n input lines and transmits over a higher capacity data link.
The demux accepts the multiplexed data stream and separates the data according to
channel and delivers them to the appropriate output lines.
 Multiplexing
Transmission channels are expensive. It is often that two
communicating entities do not fully utilize the full capacity of a
channel. For efficiency, the capacity is shared. This is called
multiplexing.

There are three types of multiplexing:

 Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM)
 Time Division Multiplexing (TDM)
 Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM)
 Frequency Division Multiplexing
(FDM)
 The frequency spectrum (bandwidth) is divided among the logical channels, single frequency
bands are allocated to different users. E.g., in radio broadcasting different frequencies are allocated
to different radio stations.
 FDM is used with analog signals.

 When 3000 Hz wide voice-grade telephone channels are multiplexed using FDM, 4000 Hz is
allocated to each channel to keep them well separated (known as a guard band).
 Time Division Multiplexing (TDM)
 In time division multiplexing, several connections share the high bandwidth
of a channel. Here multiple signals (digital) are carried on a single channel by
interleaving portions of each signal in time.
 TDM is a digital multiplexing technique and is used for digital data only.
 The T1 Carrier (Example of TDM)
 The T1 carrier consists of 24 voice channels muxed together.
 On the transmitting end of a T1, a codec (coder-decoder) samples the analog amplitude of
24 4000 Hz voice lines each at 8000 samples per second, or 125 µsecond/sample for each
of the 24 channels (see Nyquist theorem below).

 Each of the 24 channels gets to insert 8-bits into the output stream, 7-bits for data and 1
bit for signaling.
 Nyquist Theorem: A signal of bandwidth W can be completely captured by taking 2W
samples per second.

 For a 4 KHz voice signal, all information can be recovered by sampling at 8000 samples/second. Sampling
faster isn't useful but sampling slower than the Nyquist limit means that some changes in the signal will be
missed and data lost.
 The T1 Carrier (Example of TDM)
 Conversion from Analog to Digital signal with sampling
 The T1 Carrier (Example of TDM)
 Conversion from Analog to Digital signal with sampling (pulse code
modulation)
 The T1 Carrier
 Each T1 frame consists of 24 * 8 = 192 bits + 1 bit for framing = 193 bits/frame.
 There are 8000 frames generated per second (or 125 µsecond/frame).
 The gross data rate of T1 = 8000 frames/sec * 193 bits/frame = 1.544 Mbps
 For transmitted digital data, the 24th channel is used for synchronization and
is considered as overhead.
 TDM
 TDM allows multiple T1 carriers to be muxed into higher order carriers.
 4 T1 channels muxed onto 1 T2 channel (6.312 Mbps).
 7 T2 channels muxed onto 1 T3 channel (44.736 Mbps).
 6 T3 channels muxed onto 1 T4 channel (274.176 Mbps).

Multiplexing T1 streams into higher carriers.

 Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM)
 WDM is used to carry many signals on one fiber.
 Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM)
 4 fibers come together at an optical combiner, each with its energy present at a different
wavelength (λ).

 The 4 beams are combined onto a shared fiber. At the far end, the beam is split up over
as many fibers as there were on the input side. Each output fiber contains a special filter
that filters out all but one wavelength (λ).

 The resulting signal can be routed to their destination or recombined for additional
muxed transport.

 Today we have WDM products that support 96 channels of 10 Gbps each for a total of
960 Gbps.

 When the number of channels is very large and the wavelengths are spaced closed
together (0.1 nm – 0.4 nm), the system is referred to as Dense WDM (DWDM).
Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA)