Intersymbol interference (ISI)

In telecommunication, Intersymbol Interference (ISI) is a form of distortion of a

signal in which one symbol interferes with subsequent symbols. This is an unwanted
phenomenon as the previous symbols have similar effect as noise, thus making the
communication less reliable.

In practice, communications channels have a limited bandwidth, and hence transmitted pulses
tend to deviate from the assumed rectangular shape and be spread during transmission.
This pulse spreading causes overlap of pulses over adjacent time slots, as shown in the figure
below.

The signal overlap may result in an error at the receiver. This phenomenon is referred to as InterSymbol Interference (ISI).
Causes

Multipath Propagation:

Multipath propagation causes intersymbol interference when a wireless signal being transmitted
reaches a receiver through different paths. This commonly occurs when reflected signals bounce
off of surfaces, when the wireless signal refracts through obstacles, and because of atmospheric
conditions. These paths have different lengths before reaching the receiver, thus creating
different versions that reach at different time intervals. The delay in symbol transmission will
interfere with correct symbol detection. The amplitude and or phase of the signal can be distorted
when the different paths are received for additional interference
Bandlimited Channels:

A bandlimited channel is cut off past certain frequency ranges. This results in a zero response
when the signal is below or above the frequency range that the receiver allows. Whenever this
signal type goes out of range, frequency components that are removed are then an incomplete
signal. The channel with missing information, therefore, cannot use the attenuated frequency.
Results of Intersymbol Interference on Eye Diagrams:

The oscilloscope representation of transmitted signals is known as an eye diagram. Pulse code
modulation or data transmission systems can be used to apply sawtooth waves between an
oscilloscopes deflection plates at a symbol rate R(R=1/T) at horizontal deflection plates. The
resulting binary waves are comparable to the shape of the human eye. The patterns that are
created with this tool can illustrate the transmissions performance within applicable constraints.
The width of the waves in eye diagrams represent the time between each sampling. The preferred
time for sampling transmissions is when the eye is open widest on the diagram. The rate of eye
closure intervals can determine the sensitivity of timing errors on the signal. The tallest opening
of the eye diagram at any given sampling time illustrates the margin over noise. The noise
margin is basically the limit of noise that causes errors at the receiver.
When intersymbol interference is applied to the transmissions, the resulting waves are distorted
and delayed.
r(t) = u*h(t)+n(t) where u(t) is the transmitted signal, h(t) the impulse response and n(t) is
AWGN with power spectral density N0/2. In essence, we model the dispersive characteristic of
the channel by the linear lter h(t). The simplest dispersive channel is the bandlimited channel
for which the channel impulse response h(t) is that of an ideal lowpass lter. This lowpass
ltering smears the transmitted signal in time causing the effect of a symbol to spread to adjacent
symbols when a sequence of symbols are transmitted. The resulting interference, intersymbol
interference (ISI), degrades the error performance of the communication system. There are two
major ways to mitigate the detrimental effect of ISI. The rst method is to design bandlimited
transmission pulses which minimize the the effect of ISI. The ISI free pulses obtained
are called the Nyquist pulses. The second method is to lter the received
signal to cancel the ISI introduced by the channel impulse response. This
approach is generally known as equalization.

4
Throughput = Bandwidth (Hz) Spectral efficiency (bits/s/Hz).
7

Baseband is a signal that has a very narrow frequency range, i.e. a spectral
magnitude that is nonzero only for frequencies in the vicinity of the origin (termed f
= 0) and negligible elsewhere.[1] In telecommunications and signal processing,
baseband signals are transmitted without modulation, that is, without any shift in
the range of frequencies of the signal, [2] and are low frequency - contained within
the band of frequencies from close to 0 hertz up to a higher cut-off frequency or
maximum bandwidth. Baseband can be synonymous with lowpass or nonmodulated, and is differentiated from passband, bandpass, carrier-modulated,
intermediate frequency, or radio frequency (RF).

9
The raised-cosine filter is a filter frequently used for pulse-shaping in digital modulation due to
its ability to minimise intersymbol interference (ISI). Its name stems from the fact that the nonzero portion of the frequency spectrum of its simplest form (r=1) is a cosine function, 'raised' up
to sit above the (horizontal) axis.

These are extremely useful in extracting a timing signal from the received signal for the purpose
of synchronization. However, the price paid for this desirable property is the use of a channel
bandwidth double that required for the ideal Nyquist channel

The raised-cosine filter is an implementation of a low-pass Nyquist filter, i.e., one that has the
property of vestigial symmetry. This means that its spectrum exhibits odd symmetry about 1/ 2 T
where T is the symbol-period of the communications system.
The roll-off factor, , is a measure of the excess bandwidth of the filter, i.e. the bandwidth
occupied beyond the Nyquist bandwidth of 1 /2 T .
As approaches 0, the roll-off zone becomes infinitesimally narrow, hence:
lim 0 H ( f ) = r e c t ( f T )

Wn nyquist b/w
Eye Diagram
eye diagram, is an oscilloscope display in which a digital signal from a receiver is
repetitively sampled and applied to the vertical input, while the data rate is used to
trigger the horizontal sweep
Eye-diagram feature
Eye opening (height, peak to
peak)
Eye overshoot/undershoot
Eye width
Eye closure

What it measures
Additive noise in the signal
Peak distortion due to interruptions in
the signal path
Timing synchronization & jitter effects
Intersymbol interference, additive noise

1. The vertical eye opening indicates the amount of difference in signal level that is
present to indicate the difference between one-bits and zero-bits. The bigger the
difference the easier it is to discriminate between one and zero. Of course this is affected
significantly by noise in the system.
2. The horizontal eye opening indicates the amount of jitter present in the signal. The
wider the eye opening is on this axis the less problem we are likely to have with jitter.
3. The thickness of the band of signals at the zero-crossing point is also a good measure
of jitter in the signal. However, you need to be careful here as the sweep is usually
triggered from the receiver PLL and variations here are as much an indicator of the
quality of the PLL as they are of the signal itself!
4. The best indication of signal goodness is just the size of the eye opening itself. The
larger it is the easier it will be to detect the signal and the lower will be the error rate.
When the eye is nearly closed it will be very difficult or impossible to derive meaningful
data from the signal.

Matched Filter
When the input is signal plus WGN, then the filter that maximizes the SNR is the matched filter
The proof is an application of the CauchySchwarz Inequality
The filter matches (has the same shape as) the signal in magnitude in the frequency domain
The minimum-distance receiver can be implemented as a bank of matched filter