DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS

Unit – I

Objectives:

 To introduce the concepts of different pulse modulation and digital

modulation techniques.

Syllabus:
Pulse Digital Modulation:

Elements of digital communication systems, Elements of PCM, Companding in PCM systems.

Differential PCM systems (DPCM), Delta Modulation, Noise in PCM and DM Systems,
Comparison of PCM and DM Systems.

Outcomes:
Students will be able to
 Understand the basic elements of digital communication , PCM and DM Systems
 Draw the quantized version of the sampled signal
 Calculate the signal to quantization ration of PCM, DM systems.
 Compare the PCM and DM systems
 Learning Material

Introduction
The purpose of a Communication System is to transport an information bearing signal from a
source to a user destination via a communication channel.

Model of a communication system(analog):

INFORMATION I/P Signal

SOURCE AND TRANSMITTER
INPUT

CHANNEL

DESTINATION O/P Signal

AND OUTPUT RECEIVER

TRANSDUCER

Fig. 1: Block diagram of Communication System.

 The three basic elements of every communication systems are Transmitter, Receiver and
Channel.
 The Overall purpose of this system is to transfer information from one point (called Source)
to another point, the user destination.
 The message produced by a source, normally, is not electrical. Hence an input transducer is
used for converting the message to a time varying electrical quantity called message signal.
Similarly, at the destination point, another transducer converts the electrical waveform to the
appropriate message.
The transmitter is located at one point in space, the receiver is located at some other point
separate from the transmitter, and the channel is the medium that provides the electrical
connection between them.
 The purpose of the transmitter is to transform the message signal produced by the source of
information into a form suitable for transmission over the channel.
 The received signal is normally corrupted version of the transmitted signal, which is due to
channel imperfections, noise and interference from other sources. The receiver has the task
of operating on the received signal so as to reconstruct a recognizable form of the original
message signal and to deliver it to the user destination.
1. Analog Information Sources.
Elements of digital 2. Digital Information Sources. communication
systems:
The figure 2 shows the functional elements of a digital communication system.

Source of information:

 Analog Information Sources: Micro phone actuated by a speech, TV Camera

scanning a scene, continuous amplitude signals.

 Digital Information Sources: These are the teletype or the numerical output of
computer which consists of a sequence of discrete symbols or letters.

 Analog information is transformed into discrete information through the process

of sampling and quantizing.
Digital Communication System:

CHANNEL
SOURCE
SOURCE OF
OF SOURCE ENCODER MODULATOR
INFORMATION
INFORMATION ENCODER

CHANNEL

[SOURCE CHANNEL
DESTINATION DECODER DECODER DEMODULATOR

Fig.2 : Block Diagram of a Digital Communication System

Source encoder / decoder:

The Source encoder ( or Source coder) converts the input i.e. symbol sequence into a binary
sequence of 0’s and 1’s by assigning code words to the symbols in the input sequence
At the receiver, the source decoder converts the binary output of the channel decoder
into a symbol sequence. The decoder for a system using fixed length code words is quite
simple, but the decoder for a system using variable length code words will be very complex.

Aim of the source coding is to remove the redundancy in the transmitting information,
so that bandwidth required for transmission is minimized. Based on the probability of the
symbol code word is assigned. Higher the probability, shorter is the codeword. Ex: Huffman
coding.

Channel encoder / decoder:

Error control is accomplished by the channel coding operation that consists of

systematically adding extra bits to the output of the source coder. These extra bits do not
convey any information but helps the receiver to detect and / or correct some of the errors in
the information bearing bits.
There are two methods of channel coding:
1. Block coding. 2. Convolution coding

Modulator:
The Modulator converts the input bit stream into an electrical waveform suitable for
transmission over the communication channel. Modulator can be effectively used to minimize
the effects of channel noise, to match the frequency spectrum of transmitted signal with
channel characteristics, to provide the capability to multiplex many signals.

Demodulator:
The extraction of the message from the information bearing waveform produced by the
modulation is accomplished by the demodulator. The output of the demodulator is bit stream.
The important parameter is the method of demodulation.

Channel:
The Channel provides the electrical connection between the source and destination. The
different channels are: Pair of wires, Coaxial cable, Optical fiber, Radio channel, Satellite
channel or combination of any of these.
The communication channels have only finite Bandwidth, non-ideal frequency
response, the signal often suffers amplitude and phase distortion as it travels over the channel.
Also, the signal power decreases due to the attenuation of the channel. The signal is corrupted
by unwanted, unpredictable electrical signals referred to as noise.
The important parameters of the channel are Signal to Noise power Ratio (SNR), usable
bandwidth, amplitude and phase response and the statistical properties of noise.

Advantages of digital communication:

1. The effect of distortion, noise and interference is less in a digital communication

system. This is because the disturbance must be large enough to change the pulse from
one state to the other.
2. Regenerative repeaters can be used at fixed distance along the link, to identify and
regenerate a pulse before it is degraded to an ambiguous state.
3. Digital circuits are more reliable and cheaper compared to analog circuits.
4. The Hardware implementation is more flexible than analog hardware because of the
 use of microprocessors, VLSI chips etc.
5. Signal processing functions like encryption, compression can be employed to maintain
the secrecy of the information.
6. Error detecting and Error correcting codes improve the system performance by
reducing the probability of error.
7. Combining digital signals using TDM is simpler than combining analog signals using
FDM. The different types of signals such as data, telephone, TV can be treated as
identical signals in transmission and switching in a digital communication system.
8. We can avoid signal jamming using spread spectrum technique.

Disadvantages of Digital Communication:

1. Large System Bandwidth:- Digital transmission requires a large system bandwidth to

communicate the same information in a digital format as compared to analog format.

2. System Synchronization:- Digital detection requires system synchronization whereas the

analog signals generally have no such requirement.

Channels for Digital Communications:

The modulation and coding used in a digital communication system depend on the
characteristics of the channel. The two main characteristics of the channel are BANDWIDTH
and POWER. In addition the other characteristics are whether the channel is linear or
nonlinear, and how free the channel is free from the external interference. Five channels are
considered in the digital communication, namely: telephone channels, coaxial cables, optical
fibers, microwave radio, and satellite channels.

Elements of Pulse Code Modulation:

 Fig. 3: Elements of Pulse Code Modulation

Sampling:
A message signal may originate from a digital or analog source. If the message signal is analog
in nature, then it has to be converted into digital form before it can be transmitted by digital
means. The process by which the continuous-time signal is converted into a discrete time
signal is called Sampling. Sampling operation is performed in accordance with the sampling
theorem.
Sampling theorem for low pass signals:
If a band-limited signal g(t) contains no frequency component for | f | > W, then it is
completely described by instantaneous values g(KTs) uniformly spaced in time with period Ts
≤ 1/(2W). If the sampling rate fs is equal to the Nyquist rate or greater (fs ≥2W), the signal g(t)
can be exactly reconstructed.
Quantization:
The conversion of an analog (continuous) sample of the signal into a digital (discrete) form is
called the quantization process. Graphically the quantizing process means that a straight line
relation between the input and output of a linear continuous system is replaced by a staircase
characteristic. The difference between two adjacent discrete values is called a quantum or step
size. There are two types of quantization. They are i)Uniform Quantization ii) Non-Uniform
Quantization.
It is impossible to reconstruct the original signal x(t) because of the permanent
quantization error introduced during quantization at the transmitter. The quantization
error can be reduced by the increasing quantization levels.

Encoding: In combining the process of sampling and quantization the specification of a

continuous baseband signal becomes limited to a discrete set of values.To exploit the
advantages of sampling and quantizing , we require the use of an encoding process to translate
the discrete set of sample values to a more appropriate form of signal.

Regenerative repeater:

The most important feature of PCM Systems lies in the ability to control the effects of
distortion and noise produced by transmitting a PCM wave through a channel, which is
accomplished by regenerative repeater. The three basic functions are performed by a
regenerative repeater namely, equalization, timing and decision making.

Fig. 4: Block Diagram of regenerative repeater

Decoding:

The first operation in the receiver is to regenerate the received pulses. These clean pulses are then
regrouped into code words and decoded into a quantized PAM signal.

Filtering: The final operation in the receiver is to recover the signal wave by passing the
decoder output through a low-pass reconstruction filter whose cutoff requency is equal to the
message bandwidth W.

Companding in PCM:
 The use of a nonuniform quantizer is equivalent to passing the baseband signal through
a compressor and then applying the compressed signal to unifrom quantizer.
 A particular form of compression law that is practice is the so-called μ-law which is
defined by

Where m and v are the normalized input and output voltages and μ is a positive
constant.
 The below plotted the μ-law for different values of μ

Fig.5: Compression laws (a) μ-law (b) A-law

 μ-law is neither strictly linear not strictly logarithmic, but is approximately linear
at low input levels corresponding to and approximately

logarithmic at high input levels corresponding to .

 Another compression law that is used is A-law defined by

Which is plotted for different values of A in the above Fig.

 The combination of a compressor and an expander is called a compander.
Differential Pulse Code Modulation:

 The basic idea behind DPCM is removing the redundancy before encoding.
 Fig.6: DPCM system (a) Transmitter (b) Receiver

 The input to the quantizer is defined by

………….. (a)
Which is the difference between the un-quantized input sample m[n] and a

prediction of it, denoted by .

 The quantizer output may be expressed as

…………… (b)
Where q[n] is the quantization error.

 The quantizer output eq[n] is added to the predicted value to produce the
prediction filter input

…………….(c)
Substituting equation(b) in Equation (c)

……………(d)
Which is further simplified

If the prediction is good the variance of the prediction error e[n] will be smaller
than the variance of m[n].
 The receiver consists of decoder which is used to reconstruct the quantized error
signal.
  In the absence of channel noise the encoded signal at the receiver input is identical
to the encoded signal at the transmitter output.
 Accordingly, the corresponding receiver output is equal to mq[n].

 The output SNR of DPCM system is defined by

 The product of two factors as follows

Delta Modulation (DM):

 Delta modulation is also known as 1-bit DPCM. In this modulation scheme the base
band signal is sampled at a rate much higher than the Nyquist rate purposely to increase
the correlation between adjacent samples of the signal.
 In its simple form DM provides a staircase approximation to the over sampled version
of an input base band signal
 The difference between input and the approximation is quantized into two levels
indicated by +δ or – δ
 If the approximation lies above the input signal then – δ(indicated by 0) will be
transmitted and If the approximation lies below the input signal then + δ(indicated by 1)
will be transmitted.
 Fig.7: Delta Modulation

Delta Modulation Transmitter:

 Assume input signal as m(t) and the stair case approximation of input signal as m q(t)
then

the error signal is given by e(nTs)=m(nTs) - mq(nTs-Ts)

the quantized error signal is eq(nTs) = δ sgn[e(nTs)]

 From the above equations the stair case approximation is given by

mq(nTs) = mq(nTs-Ts)+ eq(nTs)

mq(nTs) = ḿ(nTs)+ eq(nTs) where ḿ(nTs)= mq(nTs-Ts)

 A DM wave is generated by applying sampled version of input signal to a modulator

that involves a comparator, quantizer and accumulator interconnected as shown in the
figure.
 Initially the input is applied to the comparator which computes the difference between
the two inputs and produces e(nTs).
 The quantizer consist of a hard limiter circuit which produces the output eq(nTs).
 Then the quantizer output is passed to an accumulator which increments or decrements
by a step size δ depending on the sign of the error signal e(nTs).The output of the
accumulator is mathematically expressed as
𝑛
mq(nTs) = 𝑚𝑞 (n𝑇𝑠 ) + ∑𝑖=1(𝑠𝑔𝑛[𝑒(𝑖𝑇𝑠 )])
 𝑛
=∑𝑖=1(𝑒𝑞 (𝑖𝑇𝑠 ))

Fig.8: Delta Modulation Transmitter

Delta Modulation Receiver:

 In the receiver the stair case approximation mq(t) is reconstructed by passing the
incoming sequence of positive and negative pulses through an accumulator in a manner
similar to that used in the transmitter.
 The quantizing noise stair case waveform can be reduced by passing the output signal
through the low pass filter with a bandwidth equal to original signal bandwidth.

Fig.9: Delta Modulation Receiver

Advantages of Delta modulation:

1. No need for Word Framing because of one-bit code word.

2. Simple design for both Transmitter and Receiver

Noise in Delta Modulation:

Two types of noise are present in delta modulation

1. Slope overload distortion

2. Granular noise

Slope overload distortion:

 If the step size is too small for the stair case waveform mq(t) then if the input has steep
curves, at these points the stair case waveform tracks the input very slowly and the
difference error is large.
 This large error will produce a distortion in the output waveform called slope overload
distortion.
 To avoid the slope overload distortion we have to select the step size such that it
satisfies the following condition

Granular noise:

 Granular noise occurs when step size is too large relative to the local slope
characteristics of the input waveform.
 Particularly when input has zero slope the quantized signal varies between positive δ
and negative δ
 The following figure illustrates how the slope overload distortion and granular noise
occurs in a delta modulated wave.
 Fig.10: Slope overload distortion and Granular noise

Quantization Noise in PCM System:

 Errors are introduced in the signal because of the quantization process. This error is
called "quantization error". We define the quantization error as:
∈= 𝑋𝑞(𝑛𝑇𝑠) − 𝑋(𝑛𝑇𝑠)

 Let an input signal x(nTs) have an amplitude in the range of xmax to - xmax
The total amplitude range is given by
Total amplitude = xmax-(- xmax)
=2 xmax

 If the amplitude range is divided into 'q' levels of quantizer, then the stepSize 'Δ'.

 If the minimum and maximum values are equal to 1, xmax,=1, - xmax=-1,then the step
size is

 If Δ is small it can be assumed that the quantization error is uniformly distributed. The
quantization noise is uniformly distributed in the interval [-Δ/2, Δ/2 ]. The figure shows
the uniform distribution of quantization noise:
 Fig.11: The uniform distribution of quantization error

 The noise power is given by

Noise Power=V2noise / R

Vnoise: is the mean square value of noise voltage, since noise is defined by random variable "ε"
and PDF fε(ε), it's mean square value is given by

Substitute the value of

Finally the Quantization Noise Power = ∆2/12

 The signal to quantization noise ratio is given as

  The number of quantization value is equal to q=2v

Step size and signal to quantization noise power are given by

 Let the normalized signal power is equal to P then the signal to quantization noise will
be given by

Comparison between PCM and DM Systems:

S.NO Parameter PCM DM

1 Number of bits It can use 4,8 or 16 bits per It uses only one bit
sample per sample.
2 Levels, step size Number of levels depends upon Step size is fixed
number of bits. Level size is fixed. cannot be varied.
3 Quantization error and Quantization error depends on Slope overload
distortion number of levels of used. distortion and
granular noise is
present.
4 Bandwidth of Highest bandwidth is required Lowest bandwidth is
transmission level since number of bits are high required.
5 Feedback There is no feedback in Feedback exists in
transmitter or receiver transmitter.
6 Complexity of notation System is complex simple
7 Signal to noise ratio Good poor
8 Area of applications Audio and video telephony. Speech and images.