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BVGOITC

EXPERIMENT NO.
Aim:- Experimental Study of PCM Modulation & Demodulation.
Apparatus:- MATLAB.

THEORY OF PULSE CODE MODULATION & DEMODULATION

In continuous wave (CW) modulation, some parameter of a sinusoidal carrier wave is varied continuously in
accordance with the message. In contrast with this, in pulse modulation, some parameter of a regular pulse –train
is varied in accordance with the message. One may distinguish two basic types of pulse modulation, namely,
pulse-analogue modulation and pulse-code modulation. In the former, a periodic pulse train is used as the carrier
wave, and some characteristic feature of each pulse (e.g.emplitude duration or position) is varied in a continuous
manner in accordance with the pertinent sample value of the message signal. On the other hand, in pulse – code
modulation (PCM), a discrete-time, discrete amplitude representation is used for the signal and, as such, it has no
CW counterpart. In a PCM system, the message signal is sampled and the amplitude of each sample is rounded
off to the nearest one of a finite set of allowable values and the rounded values are coded.

(i) PCM
The essential operations on the transmitter of a PCM system are sampling, quantising and encoding, as
shown in Fig. 1. The quantising and encoding operations are usually performed in the same circuit. The encoded
output is the PCM signal. The PCM pulses get distorted & corrupted with noise in the transmission. The receiver
regenerates these impaired signal pulses, decodes and filters to reproduce the message signal.

(ii) Sampling
The incoming message wave is sampled with a train of narrow rectangular pulses so as to closely
approximate the instantaneous sampling process. In order to ensure perfect reconstruction of the message at the
receiver, the sampling rate must be greater than twice the highest frequency component wm of the message wave.
In practice, a low-pass filter is used at the front end of the sampler in order to exclude frequencies greater than
wm before sampling.

(iii) Quantising
A continuous signal, such as voice, has within its finite amplitude range, an infinite number of amplitude
levels. However, in PCM one retains only a finite number of discrete levels by using quantisation. This
introduces some error in the signal. This is called quantisation error or quantisation noise. This means that the
original continuous signal may be approximated by a signal constructed of discrete amplitudes selected on a
minimum error basis from an available set. Clearly if one assigns the discrete amplitude levels with sufficiently
close spacing, one can make the approximated signal practically indistinguishable from the original continuous
signal.
Graphically, the quantising process means that a straight line representing the relation between input and
output of a linear continuous system is replaced by a staircase characteristic as in Fig.2. The quantising error
consists of the difference between the input and output signals of the quantizer. It is apparent that the maximum
instantaneous value of this error is half of the separation between two adjacent permissible amplitude levels.

(iv) Encoding
The quantised sample values are coded. Any plan for representing each of this discrete set of values as a
particular arrangement of discrete event in a code is called a code One of the discrete events in a code is called a
code element or symbol. In a binary code, each symbol may be either of two distinct values or kinds, such as the
presence or absence of a pulse. The two symbols of a binary code results in the maximum advantage over the
effects of noise in a transmission medium. It is also easy to regenerate.
With an n bit (binary digit) binary code, one can represent a total of 2n distinct numbers. There are several
ways by which binary symbols 1 and 0 can be represented by electrical signals. These constitute the PCM signal.

(v) Decoding
At the receiver, the received PCM pulses may be reshaped. The reshaped clean pulses are regrouped into
code words in the receiver and decoded into a quantised PCM signal. The decoding process involves generating a
pulse the amplitude of which is the linear sum of all the pulses in the code word, each pulse weighted by its
place-value (20, 21,22,23,....for a binary code) in the code.

(vi) Filtering
The final operation in the receiving is to recover the signal wave by passing the decoder output through a
low-pass reconstruction filter whose cut off frequency is equal to the message bandwidth wm. Assuming that the
transmission path is error free, the recovered signal includes no noise with the exception of the initial distortion
introduced by the quantisation process.

(vii) Quantising Noise

As mentioned earlier, quantising noise is produced in the transmitter end of a PCM system by rounding off
the sampled values of a continuous base band signal to the nearest permitted quantising levels. For a Quantising
process, let the step size be uniform and equal to S volts. It is clear from Fig. 2 that if qe denotes the value of the
error produced by the quantising process, with a random input signal, the quantising error is a random variable
which is bounded by -S/2 = qe = S/2. It can also be shown that the mean squared value of the quantising noise qe
is S2/12. When the message signal has uniform probability distribution over each setup size.

Quantization Process:
 Quantization is process of approximation or rounding off.
 The sampled signal in PCM transmitted is applied to the quantizer block.
 Quantizer converts the sampled signal into an approximate quantized signal, which consists of only a finite
number of predecided voltage levels.
 Each sampled value at the input of the quantizer is approximated or rounded off to the nearest standard
predecided voltage level.

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 This standard levels are known as the “quantization levels” refer figure, to understand the process of
quantization.
The quantization Process takes place as follows:
 The input signal X (t) is assumed to have a peak-to-peak swing of VL to VH volts. This entire voltage range
has been divided into “Q” equal intervals of step size “S”.
 “S” is called as the step size and its value is given as, S = VH-VL/Q.
 In figure the value of Q=8.
 At the center of these steps, the quantization levels q0, q1, q3…q7 are located.
 Xq (t) represents the quantized version of X (t). We obtain Xq (t) at the output of the quantizer. When X (t)
is in the range 0, then corresponding to each value of X (t), the quantizer output will be equal to “q0”.
Similarly for all the values of X (t) on the range 1, the quantizer output is constant equal to “q1”. Thus in
each range from 0 to 7, the signal X (t) is rounded off to the nearest quantization level and quantized
signal is produced.
 The quantized signal Xq (t) is thus approximation of X (t). The difference between them is called
quantization error or quantization noise. This error should be as small as possible. To minimize the
quantization error we need to reduce the step size “S” by increasing the number of quantization levels Q.

Why Quantization is required?

 If we do not use the quantizer block in the PCM transmitter, then we will have to convert each and every
sampled value into unique digital word. This will need a large number of bits per word (N). This will
increase the bit rate and hence the bandwidth requirement of the channel.
 To avoid this, if we use a quantizer will only 256 quantization levels then all the sampled values will be
finally approximated into only 256 distinct voltage levels. So we need 8 bits per word to represent each
quantized sample value. Thus the number of bits per word can be reduced. This will eventually reduce the
bit rate and bandwidth requirement.

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 Quantization Error OR Quantization Noise “ ”:
 The difference between the instantaneous values of the quantized signal and input is called as quantization
error or quantization noise.
= Xq (t) – X (t).
 Shaded portions of the waveform shown in figure show the quantization error.
 The maximum value of quantization error is + S/2 where S is step size. Therefore to reduce the quantization
error we have to reduce the step size by increasing the number of quantization levels.
 The mean square value of the quantization is given by,
 Mean square value of quantization error = S2 / 12.
 The relation between the number of quantization levels Q and the number of bits per word (N) in the
transmitted signal can be found as follows.
Because each quantized level is to be converted into unique N bit digital word, assuming a binary coded
output signal,
 The number of quantization levels Q = Number of combination of bits / word.
That is Q = 2N.
Thus if N=4 i.e 4 bits per word then the number of quantization levels will be 16.

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 Signal to Quantization noise ratio (SNRq):
 The ratio is the figure of merit for the PCM systems. The signal to quantization noise ratio with a
sinusoidal input signal to the PCM system is expressed as,
 Si / Nq =[1.8 + 6N] db for sinusoidal signal.
 This equation shows that the signal to quantization noise ration is solely dependent on the number of bits
per word i.e N. This ratio should be as high as possible, which can be achieved by increasing N. But this
increase the bit rate and hence bandwidth of the PCM system. Therefore the number of bits per word is a
compromise between high SNRq and bandwidth requirements.

Signaling Rate and Transmission Bandwidth of PCM:

 We know that, Q=2N where, Q= Number of quantization levels.
N= Number of bits per word.
 The input signal X (t) is sampled at the sampling rate fs, i.e. there is fs number of samples per each second.
Each of these samples is then converted into an N bit digital word.
 Therefore Number of bits / sec. = Number of samples/sec x Number of bits/sample.
= fs x N.
But signaling rate is nothing but the number of bits per second.
Therefore signaling rate of PCM = Nfs.
The transmission bandwidth of PCM is equal to half the signaling rate.
Therefore Transmission bandwidth of PCM = ½ Nfs.

Application of PCM:
 In telephony with (with advent of fiber optic cables).
 In space communication where a spacecraft transmits signal to earth. Here the transmitted power is very
low (10 to 15W) and the distances are huge, (a few million km.). Still due to high noise immunity, only
PCM systems can be used in such applications.

Advantages of PCM:
 Very high noise immunity.
 Due to digital nature of signal, repeaters can be placed between the transmitter and the receivers. The
repeaters actually regenerate the received PCM signal. This is not possible in analog systems. Repeaters
further reduce the effect of noise.
 It is possible to store the PCM signal due to its digital nature.
 It is possible to use various coding techniques so that only desired person can decode the received signal.

Disadvantage of PCM:
 The encoding, decoding and quantising circuitry of PCM is very complex.
 PCM requires a large bandwidth as compared to the systems.

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RESULT:-