Pulse-code modulation

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"PCM" redirects here. For other uses, see PCM (disambiguation).

Pulse-code modulation

Filename .L16, .WAV, .AIFF, .AU, .PCM [1]

extension

Internet audio/L16, audio/L8,

media type audio/L20, audio/L24[3][4]
[2]

Type code "AIFF" for L16,[1] none[3]

Magic number varies

Type of format uncompressed audio

Contained by Audio CD, AES3, WAV, AIFF, AU, M2TS, VOB,

and many others

Extended from PCM

Pulse-code modulation (PCM) is a method used to digitally represent sampled analog signals. It is

the standard form of digital audio in computers, compact discs, digital telephony and other digital
audio applications. In a PCM stream, the amplitude of the analog signal is sampled regularly at
uniform intervals, and each sample is quantized to the nearest value within a range of digital steps.
Linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM) is a specific type of PCM where the quantization levels are
linearly uniform.[5] This is in contrast to PCM encodings where quantization levels vary as a function
of amplitude (as with the A-law algorithm or the μ-law algorithm). Though PCM is a more general
term, it is often used to describe data encoded as LPCM.
A PCM stream has two basic properties that determine the stream's fidelity to the original analog
signal: the sampling rate, which is the number of times per second that samples are taken; and
the bit depth, which determines the number of possible digital values that can be used to represent
each sample.

Contents
  [hide] 

 1History
 2Implementations
 3Modulation
 4Demodulation
 5Standard sampling precision and rates
 6Limitations
 7Digitization as part of the PCM process
 8Encoding for serial transmission
 9Nomenclature
 10See also
 11Notes
 12References
 13Further reading
 14External links

History[edit]
Early electrical communications started to sample signals in order to multiplex samples from
multiple telegraphy sources and to convey them over a single telegraph cable. The American
inventor Moses G. Farmer conveyed telegraph time-division multiplexing (TDM) as early as 1853.
Electrical engineer W. M. Miner, in 1903, used an electro-mechanical commutator for time-division
multiplexing multiple telegraph signals; he also applied this technology to telephony. He obtained
intelligible speech from channels sampled at a rate above 3500–4300 Hz; lower rates proved
unsatisfactory.
In 1920, the Bartlane cable picture transmission system used telegraph signaling of characters
punched in paper tape to send samples of images quantized to 5 levels.[6] In 1926, Paul M. Rainey
of Western Electric patented a facsimile machine which transmitted its signal using 5-bit PCM,
encoded by an opto-mechanical analog-to-digital converter.[7] The machine did not go into
production.[8]
British engineer Alec Reeves, unaware of previous work, conceived the use of PCM for voice
communication in 1937 while working for International Telephone and Telegraph in France. He
described the theory and advantages, but no practical application resulted. Reeves filed for a French
patent in 1938, and his US patent was granted in 1943. [9] By this time Reeves had started working at
the Telecommunications Research Establishment.[8]
The first transmission of speech by digital techniques, the SIGSALY encryption equipment,
conveyed high-level Allied communications during World War II. In 1943 the Bell Labs researchers
who designed the SIGSALY system became aware of the use of PCM binary coding as already
proposed by Alec Reeves. In 1949, for the Canadian Navy's DATAR system, Ferranti Canada built a
working PCM radio system that was able to transmit digitized radar data over long distances. [10]
PCM in the late 1940s and early 1950s used a cathode-ray coding tube with a plate electrode having
encoding perforations.[11] As in an oscilloscope, the beam was swept horizontally at the sample rate
while the vertical deflection was controlled by the input analog signal, causing the beam to pass
through higher or lower portions of the perforated plate. The plate collected or passed the beam,
producing current variations in binary code, one bit at a time. Rather than natural binary, the grid of
Goodall's later tube was perforated to produce a glitch-free Gray code, and produced all bits
simultaneously by using a fan beam instead of a scanning beam. [12]
In the United States, the National Inventors Hall of Fame has honored Bernard M.
Oliver[13] and Claude Shannon[14] as the inventors of PCM,[15] as described in "Communication System
Employing Pulse Code Modulation", U.S. Patent 2,801,281 filed in 1946 and 1952, granted in 1956.
Another patent by the same title was filed by John R. Pierce in 1945, and issued in 1948: U.S.
Patent 2,437,707. The three of them published "The Philosophy of PCM" in 1948. [16]
The T-carrier system, introduced in 1961, uses two twisted-pair transmission lines to carry 24 PCM
telephone calls sampled at 8 kHz and 8-bit resolution. This development improved capacity and call
quality compared to the previous frequency-division multiplexing schemes.
In 1967, the first PCM recorder was developed by NHK's research facilities in Japan.[17] The 30 kHz
12-bit device used a compander (similar to DBX Noise Reduction) to extend the dynamic range, and
stored the signals on a video tape recorder. In 1969, NHK expanded the system's capabilities to 2-
channel stereo and 32 kHz 13-bit resolution. In January 1971, using NHK's PCM recording system,
engineers at Denon recorded the first commercial digital recordings.[note 1][17]
In 1972, Denon unveiled the first 8-channel digital recorder, the DN-023R, which used a 4-head
open reel broadcast video tape recorder to record is 47.25 kHz, 13-bit PCM audio.[note 2] In 1977,
Denon developed the portable PCM recording system, the DN-034R. Like the DN-023R, it recorded
8 channels at 47.25 kHz, but it used 14-bits "with emphasis, making it equivalent to 15.5 bits."[17]
In 1973, adaptive differential pulse-code modulation (ADPCM) was developed, by P.
Cummiskey, Nikil S. Jayant and James L. Flanagan.[18]
The compact disc (CD) brought PCM to consumer audio applications with its introduction in 1982.
The CD uses a 44,100 Hz sampling frequency and 16-bit resolution and stores up to 80 minutes of
stereo audio per disc.

Implementations[edit]
PCM is the method of encoding generally used for uncompressed audio, although there are other
methods such as pulse-density modulation (used also on Super Audio CD).

 The 4ESS switch introduced time-division switching into the US telephone system in 1976,

based on medium scale integrated circuit technology. [19]
 LPCM is used for the lossless encoding of audio data in the Compact disc Red Book
standard (informally also known as Audio CD), introduced in 1982.
 AES3 (specified in 1985, upon which S/PDIF is based) is a particular format using LPCM.
 On PCs, PCM and LPCM often refer to the format used in WAV (defined in 1991)
and AIFF audio container formats (defined in 1988). LPCM data may also be stored in other
formats such as AU, raw audio format (header-less file) and various multimedia container
formats.
 LPCM has been defined as a part of the DVD (since 1995) and Blu-ray (since 2006)
standards.[20][21][22] It is also defined as a part of various digital video and audio storage formats
(e.g. DV since 1995,[23] AVCHD since 2006[24]).
 LPCM is used by HDMI (defined in 2002), a single-cable digital audio/video connector
interface for transmitting uncompressed digital data.
 RF64 container format (defined in 2007) uses LPCM and also allows non-PCM bitstream
storage: various compression formats contained in the RF64 file as data bursts (Dolby E, Dolby
AC3, DTS, MPEG-1/MPEG-2 Audio) can be "disguised" as PCM linear. [25]

Modulation[edit]
Sampling and quantization of a signal (red) for 4-bit LPCM

In the diagram, a sine wave (red curve) is sampled and quantized for PCM. The sine wave is
sampled at regular intervals, shown as vertical lines. For each sample, one of the available values
(on the y-axis) is chosen by some algorithm. This produces a fully discrete representation of the
input signal (blue points) that can be easily encoded as digital data for storage or manipulation. For
the sine wave example at right, we can verify that the quantized values at the sampling moments are
8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 15, 15, 14, etc. Encoding these values as binary numbers would result in the
following set of nibbles: 1000 (23×1+22×0+21×0+20×0=8+0+0+0=8), 1001, 1011, 1101, 1110, 1111,
1111, 1111, 1110, etc. These digital values could then be further processed or analyzed by a digital
signal processor. Several PCM streams could also be multiplexed into a larger aggregate data
stream, generally for transmission of multiple streams over a single physical link. One technique is
called time-division multiplexing (TDM) and is widely used, notably in the modern public telephone
system.
The PCM process is commonly implemented on a single integrated circuit generally referred to as
an analog-to-digital converter (ADC).

Demodulation[edit]
To recover the original signal from the sampled data, a "demodulator" can apply the procedure of
modulation in reverse. After each sampling period, the demodulator reads the next value and shifts
the output signal to the new value. As a result of these transitions, the signal has a significant
amount of high-frequency energy caused by aliasing. To remove these undesirable frequencies and
leave the original signal, the demodulator passes the signal through analog filters that suppress
energy outside the expected frequency range (greater than the Nyquist frequency ).[note
3]
 The sampling theorem shows PCM devices can operate without introducing distortions within their
designed frequency bands if they provide a sampling frequency twice that of the input signal. For
example, in telephony, the usable voice frequency band ranges from approximately 300 Hz to
3400 Hz. Therefore, according to the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem, the sampling frequency
(8 kHz) must be at least twice the voice frequency (4 kHz) for effective reconstruction of the voice
signal.
The electronics involved in producing an accurate analog signal from the discrete data are similar to
those used for generating the digital signal. These devices are Digital-to-analog converters (DACs).
They produce a voltage or current (depending on type) that represents the value presented on their
digital inputs. This output would then generally be filtered and amplified for use.

Standard sampling precision and rates[edit]

Common sample depths for LPCM are 8, 16, 20 or 24 bits per sample.[1][2][3][26]
LPCM encodes a single sound channel. Support for multichannel audio depends on file format and
relies on interweaving or synchronization of LPCM streams. [5][27] While two channels (stereo) is the
most common format, some can support up to 8 audio channels (7.1 surround). [2][3]
Common sampling frequencies are 48 kHz as used with DVD format videos, or 44.1 kHz as used
in Compact discs. Sampling frequencies of 96 kHz or 192 kHz can be used on some newer
equipment, with the higher value equating to 6.144 megabit per second for two channels at 16-bit
per sample value, but the benefits have been debated. [28] The bitrate limit for LPCM audio on DVD-
Video is also 6.144 Mbit/s, allowing 8 channels (7.1 surround) × 48 kHz × 16-bit per sample = 6,144
kbit/s.
There is a L32 bit PCM, and there are many sound cards that support it. [citation needed][29]

Limitations[edit]
There are potential sources of impairment implicit in any PCM system:

 Choosing a discrete value that is near but not exactly at the analog signal level for each
sample leads to quantization error.[note 4]
 Between samples no measurement of the signal is made; the sampling theorem guarantees
non-ambiguous representation and recovery of the signal only if it has no energy at
frequency fs/2 or higher (one half the sampling frequency, known as the Nyquist frequency);
higher frequencies will generally not be correctly represented or recovered.
 As samples are dependent on time, an accurate clock is required for accurate reproduction.
If either the encoding or decoding clock is not stable, its frequency drift will directly affect the
output quality of the device.[note 5]

Digitization as part of the PCM process[edit]

In conventional PCM, the analog signal may be processed (e.g., by amplitude compression) before
being digitized. Once the signal is digitized, the PCM signal is usually subjected to further processing
(e.g., digital data compression).
PCM with linear quantization is known as Linear PCM (LPCM).[30]
Some forms of PCM combine signal processing with coding. Older versions of these systems
applied the processing in the analog domain as part of the analog-to-digital process; newer
implementations do so in the digital domain. These simple techniques have been largely rendered
obsolete by modern transform-based audio compression techniques.

 DPCM encodes the PCM values as differences between the current and the predicted value.
An algorithm predicts the next sample based on the previous samples, and the encoder stores
only the difference between this prediction and the actual value. If the prediction is reasonable,
fewer bits can be used to represent the same information. For audio, this type of encoding
reduces the number of bits required per sample by about 25% compared to PCM.
 Adaptive DPCM (ADPCM) is a variant of DPCM that varies the size of the quantization step,
to allow further reduction of the required bandwidth for a given signal-to-noise ratio.
 Delta modulation is a form of DPCM which uses one bit per sample.
In telephony, a standard audio signal for a single phone call is encoded as 8,000 analog samples
per second, of 8 bits each, giving a 64 kbit/s digital signal known as DS0. The default signal
compression encoding on a DS0 is either μ-law (mu-law) PCM (North America and Japan) or A-
law PCM (Europe and most of the rest of the world). These are logarithmic compression systems
where a 12 or 13-bit linear PCM sample number is mapped into an 8-bit value. This system is
described by international standard G.711. An alternative proposal for a floating point representation,
with 5-bit mantissa and 3-bit exponent, was abandoned.
Where circuit costs are high and loss of voice quality is acceptable, it sometimes makes sense to
compress the voice signal even further. An ADPCM algorithm is used to map a series of 8-bit µ-law
or A-law PCM samples into a series of 4-bit ADPCM samples. In this way, the capacity of the line is
doubled. The technique is detailed in the G.726 standard.
Later it was found that even further compression was possible and additional standards were
published. Some of these international standards describe systems and ideas which are covered by
privately owned patents and thus use of these standards requires payments to the patent holders.
Some ADPCM techniques are used in Voice over IP communications.

Encoding for serial transmission[edit]

Main article: Line code
See also: T-carrier and E-carrier
PCM can be either return-to-zero (RZ) or non-return-to-zero (NRZ). For a NRZ system to be
synchronized using in-band information, there must not be long sequences of identical symbols,
such as ones or zeroes. For binary PCM systems, the density of 1-symbols is called ones-density.[31]
Ones-density is often controlled using precoding techniques such as Run Length Limited encoding,
where the PCM code is expanded into a slightly longer code with a guaranteed bound on ones-
density before modulation into the channel. In other cases, extra framing bits are added into the
stream which guarantee at least occasional symbol transitions.
Another technique used to control ones-density is the use of a scrambler polynomial on the raw
data which will tend to turn the raw data stream into a stream that looks pseudo-random, but where
the raw stream can be recovered exactly by reversing the effect of the polynomial. In this case, long
runs of zeroes or ones are still possible on the output, but are considered unlikely enough to be
within normal engineering tolerance.
In other cases, the long term DC value of the modulated signal is important, as building up a DC
offset will tend to bias detector circuits out of their operating range. In this case special measures are
taken to keep a count of the cumulative DC offset, and to modify the codes if necessary to make the
DC offset always tend back to zero.
Many of these codes are bipolar codes, where the pulses can be positive, negative or absent. In the
typical alternate mark inversion code, non-zero pulses alternate between being positive and
negative. These rules may be violated to generate special symbols used for framing or other special
purposes.