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INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL NETWORKS
Introduction
Until 1980s the communication was totally analog. All wired communication systems like
PSTN and ISDN and also the wireless systems like AMPS based on FDMA were all using
analog technologies. However, in todays communication industry digital communication has
overtaken the analog communication. This dominance is a result of a blend of many advantages
that digital communication processes. Before moving in to further details it is worthwhile to
clarify what a digital signal and digital communication is.

Digital signals / Digital communication
Digital signals are a set of signals (electrical, optical or other), which are discrete in time and
also discrete in amplitude.
Similarly whenever a communication takes place between two or more parties using digital
signals, we call it a digital communication.

Some historical milestones
The first electrical communication system, the Morse code was invented by Samuel Morse in
1840 which started the electrical communication. In fact it was a digital communication system
which used a sequence of pulses with different duration to transfer different characters. The
Morse code was extensively used and is a method of communication in naval travel, even today.
After the Morse code many other similar schemes appeared which were based on character
encoding, however are not considered as very important milestones.
Gradually analog communication which could carry voice signals over distances were invented
and developed.
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However in 1937, the invention of the voice digitizing technique by Alex Reeve showed a new
way for voice communication. This technique is widely used even today and known as Pulse
Code Modulation or simply PCM. With the invention of PCM analog telephony started moving
towards all digital.
Later in 1960s a huge step towards the all digital goal was taken with the introduction of
improved digital transmission facilities (digital hierarchies) and also with the introduction of
X.25 technology in 1970s. Frame relay, ATM, ISDN they all helped in many ways for the
advancement of digital communication.
Today the world is almost 100% digital in communication and storing of data in all forms.
Moreover the preference has been centering on ip based communications.

Advantages of using digital signals / communication
Due to some advantages digital signals are preferred over analog signals. These advantages can
be listed as follows.
1. High reliability
2. Ease of multiplexing
3. Ease of signaling
4. Capability for voice and data traffic integration
5. Ease in processing
6. Ease of performance monitoring
7. Ease in transmission and switching

High reliability
Digital signals have discrete levels. Therefore even with some amount of superimposed noise,
the resultant signal9 after reception) can be re approximated to one of the discrete levels. Up to
some amount of noise, the probability of miss approximating is very low. In other words, the
probability of an error is very low in digital domain, compared to analog domain.
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Ease of multiplexing
With the digital signal streams, multiple communication streams can be multiplexed together and
then at the receivers they can be effectively de-multiplexed.

Ease of signaling
Signaling is the process of exchange of control information between the transmitters. Signaling
information can be embedded inside the message bit stream. Further multiple signaling
information can be multiplexed together.

Capability for voice and data traffic integration
Data and voice can be easily multiplexed and can be transmitted using the same physical link.
(eg: ISDN)

Ease in processing
Error control and compression coding are defined in digital domain. Therefore the information
can be easily compressed and coded in digital domain.

Ease of performance monitoring
In communication, original signal get distorted in the transmissions due to the phenomenon like
fading, noise, etc.. Therefore even with sophisticated error control schemes, there is an
associated error. Knowing this error quantitatively is very important. In digital domain this error
can be expressed in terms of bit error rate, where as in analog domain such quantitative direct
measure is not available.


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Disadvantages of digital signals / communication
1. Need for tight synchronization
2. Increased bandwidth requirement
3. Complexity and cost in digital systems

Need for tight synchronization
Upon reception at the receiver and demodulation the digital level should be identified. In order to
achieve this we need to sample our pulse stream within each and every bit duration. Without a
properly synchronized sampling, the sample stream will not correctly represent the original bit
stream. Therefore properly synchronized clock is needed at the receiver.

Increased band width requirement
Consider a voice signal with filtered bandwidth of 4 kHz. With PCM coding we get a bit rate of
64kbps. Without any vocoding or compression, this is clearly an increment in bandwidth
requirement.

Complexity and cost in digital systems
Digital systems involve ADC and also DAC. Moreover they involve advanced processing
circuits. All these make the digital system more complex than its analog counterpart.





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Different types of communication systems

Table 1: Different types of communication systems
Signal type Transmission Example
Analog Analog Telephony
Analog Digital PCM
Digital Analog Modems
Digital Digital ISDN