PRINCIPLES OF DIGITAL

COMMUNICATION
 Digital communication
• Data is in digital form
 Data sources can be analog or digital.
 Analog data (are continuous and take continuous values.
 Digital data (have discrete states and take discrete values.)
• Analogue to digital conversion includes two processes-
• sampling and quantization
• sampling - discretize the signal in time domain
• quantization - discretize the signal in amplitude domain

• Digital communication system it is often much cheaper

• and easier to design than analog communication system.
• Because
 the digital electronics has become very cheap
 many digital electronics is electronic devices are programmable in
nature.
 Advantages
• ‰
Better noise immunity
Digital pulses are less susceptible than analog signals to variations
caused by noise
• Viability of regenerating repeaters
Suitable for long distance transmission
Digital pulse modulation permits the use of regenerative
repeaters, when placed along the transmission path at short
enough distances, can practically eliminate the degrading effects
of channel noise and signal distortion.

• More reliable data processing

Error correction/detection
‰ Better encryption algorithms
• ‰
Simpler to measure and evaluate
• Reduced cost
• ‰
Better suited for multiplexing and processing
• ‰
Facilitate data compression
 Disadvantages
• Needs additional circuitry for encoding and
decoding
• Requires precise time synchronization
between transmit and receiver clocks
• Incompatible with older analog transmission
facilities
 Sampling
• Sampling is the process of measuring the amplitude of
a continuous-time signal at discrete instants. It
converts a continuous-time signal to a discrete-time
signal.
• Natural Sampling
• Flat- Top Sampling
Nyquist Sampling theorem
The sampling theorem states that this signal can be
recovered completely from a set of samples of its
amplitude, if the samples are taken at the rate of
fs (sampling freq)> 2fm ( Max signal freq) samples per
second.
 Natural Sampling

Top of the pulse takes shape of input waveform for the sample interval
 Flat- Top Sampling

• Top remains at the sampled value for the duration of the sample
• Works with sample-and-hold circuit
• Most commonly used
Sample-and-hold circuit
 Quantization
• Quantization is the process discretizing the amplitude axis.
It involves mapping an infinite number of possible
amplitudes to a finite set of values.
• There is an irrecoverable error due to quantization. It can
be made small through appropriate design
Example
• ˆSpeech signals have a bandwidth of about 3.4KHz. The
sampling rate in telephone channels is 8KHz.
• With an 8-bit quantization, this results in a bit-rate of
64,000 bits/s to represent speech.
• ฀I CD s, the sa pli g ate is 44.1KHz. With a 16-bit
quantization, the bit-rate to represent (for each channel) is
705,600 bits/s (without coding).
Uniform and Non-uniform Quantization
 Non-Linear Quantization
• The quantizing intervals are not of equal size
• Small quantizing intervals are allocated to small
signal values (samples) and large quantization
intervals to large samples so that the signal-to-
quantization distortion ratio is nearly independent of
the signal level
• S/N ratios for weak signals are much better but are
slightly less for the stronger signals
• Co pa di g is used to ua tize sig als
 Pulse modulation
• Pulse modulation systems converts a message-bearing signal to a
train of pulses. The four basic pulse modulation techniques are
• Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)/PDM (D-duration)/ PLM(L-length)
Pulse width is proportional to the amplitude of the analog signal
• Pulse Position modulation (PPM)
The position of a constant-width pulse within a prescribed time slot is
varied according to the amplitude of the analog signal
• Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM)
The amplitude of a constant-width, constant position pulse is varied
according to the amplitude of the analog signal
• Pulse Code modulation (PCM)
The analog signal is sampled and converted to a fixed length, serial
binary number of transmission. The binary number varies according
to the amplitude of the analog signal
 Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)
• Sampling and quantizing operations transform an analogue
signal to a digital signal.
• Use of quantizing and encoding distinguishes PCM from
analogue pulse modulation methods.
• To obtain PCM from an analog waveform
• At the source (transmitter end) of a communications circuit,
the analog signal amplitude is sampled (measured) at regular
time intervals.
• The sampling rate, or number of samples per second, is
several times the maximum frequency of the analog
waveform in cycles per second or hertz.
• The difference between the original analog signal and the
translated digital signal is called quantizing error.
(a) analog signal; (b) sample pulse; (c) PWM; (d) PPM; (e) PAM; (f) PCM
 PCM processes
• Filtering
• Sampling
• Quantization
• Encoding
• Line coding
 Natural Sampling

Top of the pulse takes shape of input waveform for the sample interval

Difficult for ADC to convert to PCM code because amplitude is not constant
 Flat- Top Sampling

• Top remains at the sampled value for the duration of the sample
• Works with sample-and-hold circuit
• Most commonly used
Sample-and-hold circuit
 Quantizing
• The process of measuring the numerical values of the samples and giving
them a table value in a suitable scale
• Quantization convert sampled amplitudes to discrete amplitudes taken
from a set of possible amplitudes
• The fi ite u e of a plitude i te vals is alled the ua tizi g i te val
like quantizing interval no.1 is 10-20mV; 2 is 20-30mV etc. in a case of 1V
signal.
• Linear quantizing is where the quantizing intervals are of the same size
• Quantization intervals are coded in binary form, and so the quantization
intervals will be in powers of 2.
• The codes are sign-magnitude codes, where the most significant bit (MSB)
is the sign bit, and the others represent magnitude
• In PCM, 8 bit code is used and so we have 256 intervals for quantizing
(128 levels in the positive direction and 128 levels in negative direction)
 Companding
• Formed from the words compressing and
expanding.
• A PCM compression technique where analogue
signal values are rounded on a non-linear scale.
• The data is compressed before sent and then
expanded at the receiving end using the same
non-linear scale.
• Companding reduces the noise and crosstalk
levels at the receiver.
 Pulse-Code Modulation
– The basic operation
• Transmitter : sampling, quantization, encoding
• Receiver : regeneration, decoding, reconstruction
• Operation in the Transmitter
1. Sampling
• The incoming message signal is sampled with a train of rectangular pulses
• The reduction of the continuously varying message signal to a limited
number of discrete values per second
2. Nonuniform Quantization
• The step size increases as the separation from the origin of the input-
output amplitude characteristic is increased, the large end-step of the
quantizer can take care of possible excursions of the voice signal into the
large amplitude ranges that occur relatively infrequently.
3. Encoding
• To translate the discrete set of sample values to a more appropriate form
of signal
• A binary code
 Binary symbol withstands a relatively high level of noise.
 The binary code is easy to generate and regenerate 31
Block diagram of Regenerative repeater
– Equalizer
• Shapes the received pulses so as to compensate for the effects of
amplitude and phase distortions produced by the transmission
– Timing circuitry
• Provides a periodic pulse train, derived from the received pulses
• Renewed sampling of the equalized pulses
– Decision-making device
• The sample so extracted is compared o a predetermined
threshold
– ideally, except for delay, the regenerated signal is exactly the same as
the information-bearing signal

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Operations in the Receivers
• At the destination (receiver end) of the communications
circuit, a pulse code demodulator converts the binary
numbers back into pulses having the same quantum
levels as those in the modulator.
• These pulses are further processed to restore the
original analog waveform.

1. Decoding and expanding

• Decoding : regenerating a pulse whose amplitude is the linear
sum of all the pulses in the code word
• Expander : a subsystem in the receiver with a characteristic
complementary to the compressor

2. Reconstruction
• Recover the message signal : passing the expander output
through a low-pass reconstruction filter

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