Ministry of Higher Education

University College of Wisdom

Computer technology engineering

DIGITAL COMMUNICATION

Student report

Mahmoud Mohamed Khodeir

The supervisor DR. Najam Abdullah

2019 \ 2020
Introduction:
Digital communication has proliferated in a big way in the previous years. Digital
communication is the physical transfer of data over Point-To-Point or Point-To-Multipoint
communication channel. It is transfer of discrete messages. Digital communication plays a vital
role in today’s electronic world. In digital communication the data transfer rate depends upon it’s
characterictics. Digital communication can be done over large distances through internet and
other things. It provides facilities like video conferencing which save a lot of time, money and
effort. Communications technology that intimidated many of us just a few years ago is now a
part of everyday life. Think of the evolution of the cell phone in your pocket. In addition to
changing our daily lives, the transformation in digital communications also raises important
economic, public policy and societal questions.

Why Digital Communications? :

The repeaters prevent accumulation of noise along the path This is not possible with analog
communication systems Two-state signal representation. The input to a digital system is in the
form of a sequence of bits (binary or M-array) Immunity to distortion and interference Digital
communication is rugged in the sense that it is more immune to channel noise and distortion
Can combine different signal types – data, voice, text, etc. Data communication in computers is
digital in nature whereas voice communication between people is analog in nature. Using digital
techniques, it is possible to combine both format for transmission through a common medium
Encryption and privacy techniques are easier to implement. Better overall performance Digital
communication is inherently more efficient than analog in realizing the exchange of SNR for
bandwidth Digital signals can be coded to yield extremely low rates and high fidelity as well as
privacy
Digital Communications System
In its simplest form a telecommunications system consists of a transmitter, a channel, a receiver
and two transducers.

Transducer
• Converts the input message into an electrical signal. Examples of transducers include:
– Microphone – converts sound to electrical signal
– Camera – converts image to electrical signal
• A transducer is also used to convert electrical signals to an output message (or approximation of
the input message), e.g., sound, images etc.
Transmitter
• Converts electrical signal to a form that is suitable for transmission through the transmission
medium or channel.
• Generally matching of signal to channel is done by modulation.
• Modulation uses the information (message signal) to vary the amplitude, frequency or phase of
a sinusoidal carrier,e.g. amplitude/frequency modulation AM/FM.
• The transmitter also filters and amplifies the signal.
Receiver
• Recovers the message contained in the received signal
• Receiver demodulates the message signal
• Receiver filters signal and suppresses noise
Communication Modes
There are a few basic modes of communication:
• Point-to-Point: where one user wishes to communicate with one other user, or with a small group
of nominated users. Examples include the telephone network or email. Communication is normally
two-way.
• Broadcast: Where one sender communicates with all capable receivers who cannot respond. the
communication is therefore normally one-way.
• Multicast: One sender communicates with a nominated set of receivers who cannot respond.

Methods of Data Transmission

There are a few basic methods of data transmission:
• Simplex: Data is transmitted in one direction only. The receiver cannot communicate with the
sender.
• Duplex: Data transmission can take place in both directions simultaneously.
• Half-Duplex: Data transmission can take place in both directions but not at the same time.
Time Constraints
There are generally two sets of time restraints; real-time or time-lapse:

• Real-Time: Real-time communication is instant and data must be sent and received
simultaneously. An example of this is the telephone network or two-way radio communications.
If a conversation is to be maintained there must be immediate interaction between the talkers.
Delays will make the conversation difficult or impossible.
• Time-Lapse: Data may be received at any time after having been sent. Examples include email,
radio and TV broadcasts. The time of receipt is not important.
 Consider the case of radio and TV in more detail. It does not matter when a particular
program is transmitted - time lapse is possible. However, once transmission begins it must
be continuous and at a constant rate during reception it appears as real-time.
 There are also cases where time delay is not critical unless it is excessive e.g. downloading
a file from a central server or from the Internet. A delay of a few seconds or even minutes
is acceptable, but a delay of several hours is not acceptable.
 In addition, components of a message should be received in the sequence in which they
are sent (otherwise speech will be garbled). This may require that packets of data must be
re-sequenced at the receiver end.

Transmission Modes
All transmission is analogue, in the sense that physical quantities (voltage, current, electromagnetic
radiation) must vary in a smooth way. However, the representation of the underlying signals may
be either analogue or digital.
Analogue versus Digital
Analogue
In the past most signals were generated, transmitted and received in analogue form i.e. as a sine
wave or as a more complex signal which could be made up from a series of sine waves. This was
done because speech is an analogue signal and it was easier to implement analogue electronic
circuitry than digital. However, analogue has the following disadvantages:
• It is inflexible, in that to make any changes to the system all of the changes have to be made in
hardware. This becomes more difficult and expensive as the system grows in size.
• It is prone to noise and distortion.
• Control and manipulation of signals is difficult..

Digital
Computers deal in ‘1s’ and ‘0s’. Therefore communication between computers is a matter of
transferring digital sequences between machines. The next step is to convert speech and other
analogue signals into a digital format to permit a combined network. These days digital electronic
circuitry is cheaper than analogue circuitry for the implementation of complex functions. Digital
has the following advantages:
• Normally large scale digital systems are software controlled so that it is possible to make changes
to the system in software and remotely.
• It is less prone to noise or distortion, a ‘1’ remains a ‘1’ and will not be mistaken for a ‘0’, unless
there is an extreme level of distortion.
• If noise or distortion does occur, methods exist to determine that this has happened, and if
appropriate to correct the error which has occurred.
• It is relatively easy to manipulate signals.
The mathematical treatment is not as straight forward as that for analogue.

Baseband and Bandpass

Bit representation can be:
• Sent directly e.g. voltage pulses
• Modulated in some way first e.g. amplitude/frequency modulation, AM/FM
 In the first instance we are dealing with baseband communication, in the second case bandpass
communication.

Digital Communications Transceiver.

The components of a hypothetical digital communications transceiver (transmitter/receiver) are
shown below. For explanation purposes, the transceiver includes all the elements commonly found
in digital transceivers, however, not all transceivers will contain all of these elements.

CODECs
 At its simplest a transceiver CODEC (coder/decoder) consists of an ADC (analogue to digital
converter) in the transmitter, which converts an analogue signal into digital pulses, and a DAC
(digital to analogue converter) in the receiver, which converts these digital pulses back into an
analogue signal.
 ADCs will generally consist of a sampling circuit, a quantiser and a pulse code modulator. The
sampling circuit provides discrete voltage samples taken, at regular intervals of time, from the
analogue signal. The quantiser approximates these voltages to the nearest one of an allowed
set of voltage levels. Indeed, it is the quantization process that converts the analogue signal to
a digital one. The PCM encoder converts each quantised level to a binary codeword, i.e., digital
ones and zeros. An anti-aliasing filter is sometimes included prior to sampling in order to
reduce distortion that can occur due to the sampling process.
 In the receiver’s DAC received binary voltages are converted to quantised voltage levels by a
PCM decoder which is then smoothed by a low pass filter to reconstruct the original,
analogue, signal.
Source, Security and Error Control Coding
In addition to PCM encoding and decoding a CODEC may have up to 3 additional functions:
 Firstly, in the transmitter it may reduce the number of digital pulses (bits) required to
convey a message. This is called source coding and can be thought of as removing
redundant or surplus bits.
 Secondly, it may encrypt the source coded digits using a cipher for security. This ensures
security when passing private information.
 Finally, the CODEC may add extra digits to the (possibly source coded and encrypted)
PCM signal which can be used at the receiver to detect, and possibly correct, errors made
during signal detection. This is known as channel coding.
The source, security and error control decoding operations in the receiver are the inverse of those
in the transmitter.
Multiplexers
In digital communications, multiplexing, to accommodate several simultaneous transmissions,
usually means time division multiplexing (TDM). Time division multiplexers interleave either
PCM codewords, or individual PCM bits, to allow more than one information link to share the
same physical transmission medium. This can be cable, optical fibre or a radio frequency channel.
Demultiplexers: split the received composite bit stream back into its component PCM signals.

MODEMs
MODEMs (modulators/demodulators) change digital pulse streams so that they can be transmitted
over a given physical medium, at a given rate, in a specified or allocated frequency band. Typically
the modulator shapes, or filters, the pulses to restrict their bandwidth. The input to a modulator is
thus a baseband signal, while the output is often a bandpass waveform.

Multiple Accessing
Multiple accessing refers to those techniques, and/or rules,which allow more than one transceiver
pair to share a common transmission medium (e.g. one optical fibre, one satellite transponder or
one piece of coaxial cable). Several different types of multiple accessing are currently in use, each
type having its own advantages and disadvantages. The multiple accessing problem is essentially
one of efficient and equitable sharing of the limited resource represented by the transmission
medium.
Signal Transmission
The communications path from transmitter to receiver may use lines or free space. Examples of
the former are wire pairs, coaxial cables and optical fibres. The most important use of the latter is
radio, although in some situations infrared and optical free space links are also possible. (e.g.
remote controls for TV, video and hi-fi equipment and also some securitysystems). Whatever the
transmission medium, it is at this
point that much of the attenuation, distortion, interference and noise is encountered.
Line Transmission: The essential advantages of line transmission are:
1. Path loss is modest.
2. Signal energy is confined and interference between systems is therefore negligible.
3. Path characteristics (e.g. attenuation and distortion) are usually stable and relatively easy to
compensate for.
The disadvantages of line transmission include:
1. Laying cables in the ground or constructing overhead is expensive.
2. Planning permission may be needed for underground cables and overhead wires.
3. A physical connection to the network is required for each subscriber.
4. Mobile communications cannot be provided.
5. Networks cannot easily be added to or subtracted from.The table below summarises the
nominal frequency range of selected types of line and typical repeater (used to compensate for
attenuation) spacings.
Frequency Repeater Spacing
Range
Overhead Line 0-160 kHz 40 km
Twisted Pairs 0-1 MHz 2 km
 Coaxial Cables 0-500 MHz 1-9 km
Optical Fibres =1610 − 810 nm 100s of km

Radio Transmission: The advantages of radio transmission are:

1. It is cheap and quick to implement.
2. Planning permission is only needed for the erection of towers to support repeaters and terminal
stations.
3. It has an inherent broadcast potential.
4. It has an inherent mobile communications potential.
5. Networks can be quickly configured and extra terminals or nodes easily introduced or
removed.
The principal disadvantages of radio are:
1. Path loss is generally large due to the tendency of the transmitted signal energy to spread
out, most of this energy effectively missing the receive antenna.
2. The spreading of signal energy makes interference between systems a problem.
3. Path characteristics (i.e. attenuation and distortion) tend to vary in time, often in an
unpredictable way making equalisation more difficult
4. The time varying nature of the channel can result in anomalous propagation of signals to
locations well outside their normal range. This may cause unexpected interference
between widely spaced systems.

Advantages of digital communication:

1. It is fast and easier.
2. No paper is wasted.
3. The messages can be stored in the device for longer times, without being damaged, unlike
paper files that easily get damages or attacked by insects.
4. Digital communication can be done over large distances through internet and other things.
5. It is comparatively cheaper and the work which requires a lot of people can be done simply by
one person as folders and other such facilities can be maintained.
6. It removes semantic barriers because the written data can be easily chaned to different languages
using software.
7. It provides facilities like video conferencing which save a lot of time, money and effort.

Disadvantages:
1. It is unreliable as the messages cannot be recognised by signatures. Though software can be
developed for this, yet the softwares can be easily hacked.
2. Sometimes, the quickness of digital communication is harmful as messages can be sent with
the click of a mouse
3. Digital Communication has completely ignored the human touch. A personal touch cannot be
established because all the computers will have the same font!
4. The establishment of Digital Communication causes degradation of the environment in some
cases. "Electronic waste" is an example.
5. Digital Communication has made the whole wordl to be an "office." The people carry their
work to places where they are supposed to relax.
6. Many people misuse the efficiency of Digital Communicatio. The sending of hoax messages,
the usage by people to harm the society, etc cause harm to the society on the whole.

Future SCOPE of Digital Communication

DC Communications technology that intimidated many of us just a few years ago is now a part of
everyday life. Think of the evolution of the cell phone in your pocket.
Application area of digital communication systems is extremely wide: In addition to the well
known telecommunication networks as the GSM system, it forms the bases of common-day
electrical apparatuses from wrist watches to TVs, video games and satellites.

CONCLUSION
Digital communication is most cost-effective form of communication (both internal and
external). Digital communication is always preferred over analog communication as it is less
prone to noise or distortion and is relatively easy to manipulate signals.Digital electronic
circuitry is cheaper than analogue circuitry for the implementation of complex functions