Lecture 1

Data Communication and Media

• Concept and Model of Communications

• Analogy Signal and Digital Signal
• Signal Frequency, Spectrum and Bandwidth
• System Frequency Response and Bandwidth
• Transmission Media and Types
• Transmission Modes
- Parallel & Serial Transmission
- Asynchronous & Synchronous Transmissions
- Simplex & Duplex Transmission
• Communication Standards: RS/EIA-232 & Others
 Lecture 1

Concept and Model of Communications

General Communications: face-to-face conversation, write a letter, etc.
Electronic Communications: telephone, wireless phone, TV, radar, etc.

Our Focus  Computer Communication

General Communication Model

S(t) T(t) Transmission Tr(t) Sd(t)
Source Transmitter Receiver Destination
System

Microphone Transformer Line/Cable Transformer Speaker

Telephone Encoder Fiber/Air Decoder Earphone
Computer Compress Satellite Uncompress Computer
Scanner Modulator Network Demodulator Printer

Basic Communication Criteria: Performance, Reliability, Security

 Lecture 1
Analogy Signal and Digital Signal
Information must be converted into
electrical energy, called signal, before transmission.
s(t) voltage
Text, voice
Video, etc
t
Digital Converter Digital Signal
Text, voice Encoder s(t) voltage
Video, etc
Analog t
Analogy Signal

Input Signal s(t) General Output Signal o(t) =H[s(t)]

Communication
Component – H()
2
Signal Power: s (t) Digital-to-Digital 4 classes/types
Signal Energy: Analogy-to-Digital of systems
ʃs 2(t)dt Digital-to-Analogy
Analogy-to-Analogy
- Input-to-Output
 Lecture 1
Signal Frequency, Spectrum and Bandwidth
Signal in frequency domain
Signal in time domain Transformation Spectrum
s(t) Periodic
cos2πf1t S(f)
T=1/f1
t f
f: frequency
T f1
S(f)
period
A B
s(t)=Acos2πf1t + Bcos2πf2t T=LCM(1/f1, 1/f2) f
f1 f2
s(t) S(f)
Aperiodic

t Fourier Transform
f
Analogy Signal Bandwidth
S(f)=ʃs(t)e -j2πf df
s(t) S(f)

t f
Digital Signal Bandwidth
 Lecture 1
Time-Frequency Relation and Signal Bandwidth
General Relations:
Time Domain Frequency Domain Signal Bandwidth
Change Slow Low Frequency small
Change Fast High Frequency large

Frequency Unit: Hertz (Hz), Kilohertz (KHz), Megahertz (MHz), Gigahertz (GHz), Terahertz (THz)

• Earthquake wave: 0.01 ~ 10 Hz

• Nuclear explosion signal: 0.01 ~ 10 Hz
• Electrocardiogram (ECG): 0 ~ 100 Hz
• Wind noise: 100 ~ 1000 Hz
• Speech: 100 ~ 4000 Hz (4 KHz)
• Audio: 20 ~ 20000 Hz (20 KHz)
• NTSC TV: 6 MHz
• HDTV: > 10 MHz
 Lecture 1

System Frequency Response & Bandwidth

Input Signal x(t) Output Signal y(t) =H[x(t)]

System: H()
Input Spectrum: X(f) Output Spectrum: Y(f)

System Frequency Response: H(f) = Y(f)/X(f)

H(f)

System Bandwidth

f
Signal can pass
Signal can’t pass
 Lecture 1

Transmission Media

A transmission medium: - a connection between a sender and a receiver

- a signal can pass but with attenuation/distortion
- a special system with a transmission bandwidth

Guided (Wired) Media Unguided (Wireless) Media

(lines) (air, vacuum, water, etc.)
- Twisted pair (0~10MHz) - LF (30~300KHz, Navigation)
- Coaxial cable (100K~500MHz) - MF/HF (300~3000KHz, AM/SW radio)
- Optical fiber (180~370THz) - VHF (30~300MHz, TV & FM radio)
- UHF (0.3~3GHz, TV, mobile phone)
- SHF (3~30GHz, satellite, microwave)
- EHF (30~300GHz, experimental com)
- Infrared (no frequency allocation)
 Lecture 1

Frequency and Spectrum

ISM band
902 – 928 Mhz
2.4 – 2.4835 Ghz
5.725 – 5.785 Ghz

LF MF HF VHF UHF SHF EHF


30kHz 300kHz 3MHz 30MHz 300MHz 3GHz 30GHz 300GHz

10km 1km 100m 10m 1m 10cm 1cm 100mm 

X rays
Gamma rays
 infrared visible UV
1 kHz 1 MHz 1 GHz 1 THz 1 PHz 1 EHz

Propagation characteristics are different in each frequency band

 Lecture 1
Parallel Transmission and Serial Transmission
…011000110111010111…
Segment the 0/1 ?
stream into Sender Receiver
N bits groups
N N N N
… 01…00 01…10 11…10 10…11 …

Parallel Transmission Serial Transmission

0 0 0
1 1 1
1 1 0110001 1
0 Sender 0 0 Receiver
Sender Receiver
0 0 0
0 0 0
1 1 1
P/S converter S/P converter
7 (N) bits are sent together 7 (N) bits are sent one after another
7 (N) lines are needed Only 1 line is needed
 Lecture 1
Asynchronous and Synchronous Transmission
Timing or synchronization between a sender and a receiver is very important for data transmission

Asynchronous transmission:
1) A bit stream is segmented into small groups  characters (5~8 bits)
2) Add a start bit (0) and a stop bit (1) at the beginning and end of each character
3) Frame = start_bit + character + stop_bit (7~10 bits), but 2/9~2/10 no real data
4) Arbitrary long gap between two characters or frames

1 0110001 0 1 1001100 0 1 0011101 0 1 1011100 0

Sender Receiver
independent

Synchronous transmission:
1) A bit stream is segmented into relative large groups/blocks many characters or bytes
2) Add control bits at the beginning and end of each block
3) Frame = H_control_bits + characters (data_bits) + T_control_bits
4) No gap between two characters in a data block

Con_bits 0110001
... 0110001 1001100 0011101 1011100 Con_bits
Sender Receiver
synchronized
 Lecture 1

Simplex Transmission and Duplex Transmission

Direction of data
Simplex Device A Device B
Transmission
One can send and the other can receive

Direction of data at time 1

Half Duplex Device A Device B
Transmission
Direction of data at time 2
Both can send and receive but in different time

Direction of data all the time

Full Duplex Device A Device B
Transmission
Both can send and receive simultaneously
 Lecture 1

Communication Standards and Related Organizations

Communications need standards for inter-operations of different devices

Standard Organizations:
- ISO (International Standards Organization): ISO number
- ITU (International Telecommunication Union): V.num & X.num
- EIA (Electronic Industries Association): EIA-num
- IEEE (Institute of Electronics Engineers): IEEE.num
- ANSI (American National Standards Institute): ASCII, etc.
- ATM Forum and ATM Consortium
- IETF (Internet Society and Internet Engineering Task Force): RFC num
- W3C (World Wide Web Consortium): HTTP, HTML, XML, …
- WAP Forum (Wireless Application Protocol): WAP-num
 Lecture 1

Serial & Asynchronous Transmission Standards

Standards of transmission in short distance:

- EIA-232 or RS-232
- V.24
- ISO 2110
- EIA-449/RS-422/RS-423
- EIA-530
- X.21

Their common features

- Serial & asynchronous transmission
- Transmissions of ASCII code, byte, char
- Use twisted copper lines
- Low speed: several Kbits ~ Mbits per second
- Short distance: < several tens of meters
 Lecture 1

EIA/RS-232 Standard
Waveform of ‘+’, 2B or 0101101

Device A Device B
Sender Receiver

• Transmit characters (7 or 8 bits)

• Sender: 0  +15v and 1  -15v
• Start bit (0) and stop bit (1) for every character  9/10 bits in total
• A sender never leaves wire at 0v; when idle, puts –15v, i.e., 1
• Receiver: 0  (+3v, +15v) and 1  (-3v, -15v), otherwise error
 Lecture 1

EIA/RS-232 Standard (cont.)

• Agreement of transmission timing or rate (bps  bits per second)

- 300bps, 2.4Kbps, 4.8Kbps, …, 19.2Kbps, 33.6Kbps, 56Kbps
• Setting bit rates of devices/hardware
- switch (manually), software, auto-detection
• Either simplex or duplex

T: Transmitter R: Receiver G: Ground

 Lecture 1

EIA/RS-232 and Other Standards

• EIA-232: rate<64Kbps; connection length< 15 meters; 25 pin connector

- pin 2: receive (RxD); pin 3: transmit (TxD); pin 7: groud
- other pins for transmission control
• EIA-449: rate<10Mbps; connection length< 12 meters; 37/9 pin connector
• EIA-530: same as the above; 25 pin connector
• X.21: 64/192 Kbps (N-ISDN rate); 15/8 pin connector
 Exercise 1
1. Two signals are given in the following figures. Whose bandwidth is large? Why?

s(t) s(t)

t t
(a) (b)

2. Draw the RS-232 waveform diagrams of ASCII letters of R (1010010) and S (1110011).

3. Give at least one example for each of the following transmission/communication modes:
parallel transmission, serial transmission, simplex transmission and duplex transmission.

4. Suppose one sent 10000 7bit characters across an EIA-232 or RS-232 connection that
operated at 9600 bps. How long will the minimum transmission time be required?
(Hint: remember to add a start bit and a stop bit on each character.)