Chapter 3:

PCM Noise and Companding

Quantization Noise
Signal to Noise Ratio
PCM Telephone System
Nonuniform Quantization
Companding

Huseyin Bilgekul
Eeng360 Communication Systems I
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Eastern Mediterranean University

Quantization Noise
The process of quantization can be interpreted as an additive noise
process.
Signal
X

Quantized Signal
XQ
Quantization Noise
nQ

The signal to quantization noise ratio (SNR)Q=S/N is given as:

Average Power{ X }
( SNR )Q
Average Power{nQ }

Effects of Noise on PCM

Two main effects produce the noise or distortion in the PCM output:

Quantizing noise that is caused by the M-step quantizer at the PCM transmitter.
Bit errors in the recovered PCM signal, caused by channel noise and improper filtering.

If the input analog signal is band limited and sampled fast enough so that the aliasing noise on the
recovered signal is negligible, the ratio of the recovered analog peak signal power to the total average
noise power is:

The ratio of the average signal power to the average noise power is

M is the number of quantized levels used in the PCM system.

Pe is the probability of bit error in the recovered binary PCM signal at the receiver DAC before it is converted
back into an analog signal.

Effects of Quantizing Noise

If Pe is negligible, there are no bit errors resulting from channel noise and no ISI, the Peak SNR resulting from
only quantizing error is:

The Average SNR due to quantizing errors is:

Above equations can be expresses in decibels as,

Where, M = 2n
= 4.77 for peak SNR
= 0 for average SNR

DESIGN OF A PCM SIGNAL FOR TELEPHONE SYSTEMS

Assume that an analog audio voice-frequency(VF) telephone signal occupies a band from 300
to 3,400Hz. The signal is to be converted to a PCM signal for transmission over a digital
telephone system. The minimum sampling frequency is 2x3.4 = 6.8 ksample/sec.
To be able to use of a low-cost low-pass antialiasing filter, the VF signal is oversampled with
a sampling frequency of 8ksamples/sec.
This is the standard adopted by the Unites States telephone industry.
Assume that each sample values is represented by 8 bits; then the bit rate of the binary PCM
signal is

This 64-kbit/s signal is called a DS-0 signal (digital signal, type zero).
The minimum absolute bandwidth of the binary PCM signal is

BPCM

R nf s

2
2

This B is for a sinx/x type pulse sampling

DESIGN OF A PCM SIGNAL FOR TELEPHONE SYSTEMS

If we use a rectangular pulse for sampling the first null bandwidth is given by

We require a bandwidth of 64kHz to transmit this digital voice PCM signal, whereas the bandwidth of the original
analog voice signal was, at most, 4kHz.

We observe that the peak signal-to-quantizing noise power ratio is:

Note:
1.

Coding with parity bits does NOT affect the quantizing noise,

2.

However coding with parity bits will improve errors caused by

channel or ISI, which will be included in Pe ( assumed to be 0).

Nonuniform Quantization
Many signals such as speech have a nonuniform distribution.
The amplitude is more likely to be close to zero than to be at higher levels.
Nonuniform quantizers have unequally spaced levels
The spacing can be chosen to optimize the SNR for a particular type of signal.
Output sample
XQ
6
4

Example: Nonuniform 3 bit quantizer

-8

-6

-4

-2

2
-2

-4

-6

Input sample
X

Companding
Nonuniform quantizers are difficult to make and expensive.
An alternative is to first pass the speech signal through a
nonlinearity before quantizing with a uniform quantizer.
The nonlinearity causes the signal amplitude to be
Compressed.
The input to the quantizer will have a more uniform
distribution.
At the receiver, the signal is Expanded by an inverse to the
nonlinearity.
The process of compressing and expanding is called
Companding.

 -Law Companding
1

Output |x(t)|

Telephones in the U.S., Canada and

Japan use -law companding:
| y (t ) |

ln(1 | x (t )|)
ln(1 )

Where = 255 and |x(t)| < 1

1
Input |x(t)|

Non Uniform quantizing

Voice signals are more likely to have amplitudes near zero than at extreme peaks.
For such signals with non-uniform amplitude distribution quantizing noise will be
higher for amplitude values near zero.
A technique to increase amplitudes near zero is called Companding.

Effect of non linear quantizing can be

can be obtained by first passing the
analog signal through a compressor
and then through a uniform quantizer.

x
C(.)
Compressor

Q(
)
Uniform Quantizer
.

Example: -law Companding

1

x[n]=speech /song/

0.5
0
-0.5
-1

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

8000

9000

10000

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

8000

9000

10000

y[n]=C(x[n])
Companded Signal

0.5
0
-0.5
-1

Segment of
x[n]

0.5
0

Close View of the Signal

-0.5
-1
2200

2300

2400

2500

2600

2700

2800

2900

3000

2300

2400

2500

2600

2700

2800

2900

3000

Segment of y[n]
Companded Signal

0.5
0
-0.5
-1
2200

A-law and law Companding

These two are standard companding methods.

u-Law is used in North America and Japan
A-Law is used elsewhere to compress digital telephone signals

SNR of Compander
The output SNR is a function of input signal level for uniform quantizing.
But it is relatively insensitive for input level for a compander

SNR Performance of Compander

The output SNR is a function of input signal level for uniform quantizing.
But it is relatively insensitive for input level for a compander.
= 4.77 - 20 Log ( V/xrms)

for Uniform Quantizer

V is the peak signal level and xrms is the rms value

= 4.77 - 20 log[Ln(1 + )]
= 4.77 - 20 log[1 + Ln A]

for -law companding

for A-law companding

V.90 56-Kbps PCM Computer modem

The V.90 PC Modem transmits data at 56kb/s from a PC
via an analog signal on a dial-up telephone line.
A law compander is used in quantization with a value
for of 255.
The modem clock is synchronized to the 8-ksample/ sec
clock of the telephone company.
7 bits of the 8 bit PCM are used to get a data rate of
56kb/s ( Frequencies below 300Hz are omitted to get rid
of the power line noise in harmonics of 60Hz).
SNR of the line should be at least 52dB to operate on
56kbps.
If SNR is below 52dB the modem will fallback to lower
speeds ( 33.3 kbps, 28.8kbps or 24kbps).