Communication Systems

Technology Embedded in Daily Life

VSP 2019, Dr. Lutz Lampe, Dr. Paul Lusina

 What “communication
systems” have you used
today?
What are “communication
systems”?
What are “communication
systems”?

Systems that convey

information through space
and time
 Today’s Class:

Exploration of very early communication systems – what

can they teach us about systems today?

Introduction to modern communication systems – in

particular wireless communications

Overview of communication networks – how many

people coordinate exchanging messages
Very early communication systems
 Very early communication systems
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Very early communication systems

public domain image

http://www.qsl.net/sv1uy/index.html#hydraulic
 Early communication systems
“Experiments on communication with electricity, initially unsuccessful,
started in about 1726. Scientists including Laplace, Ampère, and Gauss
were involved.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_telecommunication
 Early communication systems

Telegraphy

Optical telegraph
(semaphore)

Unknown - 19th century painting . Photographed in Musee des Arts et Metiers

public domain image

 Early communication systems

Telegraphy

Optical telegraph
(semaphore)

John Farey, Jr. - Rees's Cyclopædia, Plates Vol. IV, "TELEGRAPH", Fig. 4; from a digital scan at http://archive.org/details/cyclopaediaplates04rees
 Early communication systems

Electrical Telegraphy 1830-ish

5-needle telegraph, see

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooke_and_Wheatstone_tel
egraph
 Early communication systems

Electrical Telegraphy 1830-ish

"
! !
 Early communication systems

Electrical Telegraphy
S
A •– J • ––– •••

B –••• K – •– T –
C – •–• L •–•• U ••–
D –•• M –– V •••–
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F ••–• O ––– X – ••–
G ––• P •– –• Y – •– –
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 Early communication systems

Electrical Telegraphy
S
A •– 8.2 J • – – – 0.2 ••• 6.3

B –••• 1.5 K – •– 0.8 T – 9.1

C – •–• 2.8 L •–•• 4.0 U ••– 2.8
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 Early communication systems
Electrical Telegraphy - infrastructure
18,000 km of cable laid by 1861
submarine telegraphy
- 1851 Dover (England) to Calais (France)
- 1858 (1865/56) transatlantic cable
- ….
- 1870 London (England) to Bombay/Mumbai (India)

Electrical Telegraphy - communication challenge

long cable ⇒ attenuation and dispersion ⇒ low speed
William Thompson (Lord Kelvin) used Fourier theory to
design cables, equipment and pulse shapes
 Early communication systems

Telephone

1860…70

Philipp Reis
Antonia Meucci
Alexander Graham Bell
Faces of Early Communications

public domain image

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_telecommunication

Visual, auditory and ancillary methods (non-electrical)[edit]

• Prehistoric: Fires, Beacons, Smoke signals, Communication drums, Horns
• 6th century BCE: Mail
• 5th century BCE: Pigeon post
• 4th century BCE: Hydraulic semaphores
• 1500 Korean hwacha net uses hwachas arrows to send mails throughout a town.
• 15th century CE: Maritime flag semaphores
• 1672: First experimental acoustic (mechanical) telephone
• 1790: Semaphore lines (optical telegraphs)
• 1867: Signal lamps
• 1877: Acoustic phonograph

Basic electrical signals[edit]

• 1838: Electrical telegraph. See: Telegraph history
• 1830s: Beginning of attempts to develop "wireless telegraphy", systems using some form of
ground, water, air or other media for conduction to eliminate the need for conducting wires.
• 1858: First trans-Atlantic telegraph cable
• 1876: Telephone. See: Invention of the telephone, History of the telephone, Timeline of the
telephone
• 1880: Telephony via lightbeam photophones
Early communication systems:
The Photophone

public domain image

"the greatest invention [I have] ever made, greater than the telephone"
 Early communication systems
The birth of radio communications
• Maxwell (1864): predicted existence of radio waves
• Hertz (1888): produced, transmitted, and detected
electromagnetic waves
• Marconi (1895): wireless message transmitted over 3 km
• Fessenden (1900): first amplitude modulation (AM) voice
transmission
• Marconi (1901): wireless message crossed Atlantic (3,500
km)
• Armstrong (1933): invention of frequency modulation (FM)
 Early Communication Systems

Transmitter Receiver
Info Medium Info
processing processing

Throughout this course we will incrementally

elaborate on this model
 Activity:
Anatomy of a Communication System
 Modern Communication

• Wireless communication medium

• Cellular resource management
• Multiple access techniques
• ISO/OSI, TCP/IP layering
The Wireless Spectrum
NTIA link

27
 The Wireless Spectrum
is an expensive resource …

Canada
The Canada 2008 Wireless Spectrum Auction beginning on 2008-05-27
Industry Canada commenced an auction for 105 MHz of spectrum with
40 MHz reserved for new entrants. The auction concluded on July 23, 2008
after 331 rounds and raised $4.25 billion.

Germany
From 2000-07-31 to 2000-08-18, the German government conducted an
auction for 12 frequency blocks (approx. 140 MHz) for the new UMTS mobile
telephony standard. The total of the bids exceeded expectations by reaching
the staggering amount of 50.8 billion Euros (68 billion CAD).
 The Wireless Spectrum
is an expensive resource …
⇒ cramp as much traffic into a unit of spectrum

⇒
 Cellular Telephony

f1 f2 f3
Cellular Telephony
Example

32
 Cellular Telephony

© Qualcomm:
“LTE Advanced:
Heterogeneous Networks”
https://www.qualcomm.com
/documents/lte-
heterogeneous-networks

Different types of base stations to improve spectral

efficiency per area
- macrocells with high power (5-40 W)
- pico and femto with lower power (100mW-2 W)

Offload traffic from macro to small cells

 Cellular Telephony
mobile telephony based on cellular concept

“In 1947 Bell Labs was the first to propose a cellular radio
telephone network. The primary innovation was the development
of a network of small overlapping cell sites supported by a call
switching infrastructure that tracks users as they move through a
network and passes their calls from one site to another without
dropping the connection”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_telephony
 Cellular Telephony
Five generations of systems

1st generation:
analog
voice
late 1970’s, 1980’s
 Cellular Telephony

1st generation:
Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA)

user/channel 1 user/channel 3

user/channel 2

830.00 MHz 830.03 MHz 830.06 MHz frequency

 Cellular Telephony
Five generations of systems

2nd generation:
digital
mostly voice
1990’s
GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications,
originally Groupe Spécial Mobile)
 Cellular Telephony

.
tim

..
2
2nd generation (GSM): 1
Time Division 8
Multiple Access (TDMA) 7
6
5
4 ...
3
2
1
frequency
200 kHz
 Cellular Telephony
Five generations of systems

3rd generation:
digital
data
2000’s
WCDMA (UMTS, HSPA), CDMA 2000 (EV-DO)
 Cellular Telephony Communications

Five generations of systems

3rd generation:
digital
data
2000’s
WCDMA (UMTS, HSPA), CDMA 2000 (EV-DO)
 Cellular Communications

e
tim
3rd generation:
Code Division
Multiple Access (CDMA)

frequency
5 MHz (5000 kHz)
 Cellular Communications
user 1 user 2

user 1

user 2

user 3

user 4

time

user 3 user 4

FDMA TDMA
 Cellular Communications

user 1 user 1

user 2 user 2

user 3 user 3

user 4 user 4

time time

CDMA TDMA
 Cellular Communications
Five generations of systems

4th generation:
digital (features keep increasing and improving)
all Internet Protocol (IP)
2008+
Core network: Evolved Packet Core
Radio access network: Long-term evolution (LTE)
 Cellular Communications

.
..
e
tim
4th generation (LTE):
Orthogonal Frequency
Division Multiplexing
(OFDM)
Orthogonal Frequency
Division Multiple Access
(OFDMA) ...
1 ms

180 kHz

frequency
1.4 MHz - 20 MHz
 Cellular Communications
Five generations of systems

5th generation:
massive mobile broadband
ultra reliable low latency communication
massive machine type communication
LTE New Radio
 Some figures and forecasts
from: Ericsson, “Ericsson Mobility Report - On the Pulse of the Networked Society” [Online]. Available.:
http://www.ericsson.com/res/docs/2015/mobility-report/ericsson-mobility-report-nov-2015.pdf.
 Some figures and forecasts
from: Ericsson, “Ericsson Mobility Report” [Online]. Available.:
https://www.ericsson.com/49d1d9/assets/local/mobility-report/documents/2019/ericsson-mobility-report-june-
2019.pdf
 LiFi…. 2011 Ted Talk

https://www.ted.com/talks/harald_haas_wireless_data_from_every_light_bulb
 So many other wireless systems
Satellite ⇒
rate
Free-space
1 Gbps Ultra- optical
wideband

100 Mbps LiFi WLAN Microwave

(WiFi, point-to-point links
IEEE 802.11xxx)
10 Mbps

Cellular
1 Mbps (2G, 3G, 4G)
Bluetooth
NFC
100 kbps ZigBee

0.1 m 1 m 10 m 100 m 1 km 10 km
range
*Note: coarse estimates for illustration purposes only
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_telecommunication

Advanced electrical and electronic signals

• 1896: First practical wireless telegraphy systems based on Radio. See: History of radio.
• 1914: First North American transcontinental telephone calling
• 1927: Television. See: History of television
• 1927: First commercial radio-telephone service, U.K.–U.S.
• 1930: First experimental videophones
• 1934: First commercial radio-telephone service, U.S.–Japan
• 1936: World's first public videophone network
• 1946: Limited capacity Mobile Telephone Service for automobiles
• 1956: Transatlantic telephone cable
• 1962: Commercial telecommunications satellite
• 1964: Fiber optical telecommunications
• 1965: First North American public videophone network
• 1969: Computer networking
• 1973: First modern-era mobile (cellular) phone
• 1979: INMARSAT ship-to-shore satellite communications
• 1981: First mobile (cellular) phone network
• 1982: SMTP email
• 1983: Internet. See: History of Internet
• 1998: Mobile satellite hand-held phones
• 2003: VoIP Internet Telephony
 Layering
Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model

Application

Presentation
Host
layers
Session

Transport

Network
Media
Data Link
layers
Physical

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model
 Layering
Transport Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) model

Application

Presentation Application
Host
layers
Session

Transport Transport

Network Internet
Media
Data Link Link
layers
Physical

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite
 Layering
LTE:

Data Link

Physical

from: NXP, “Long Term Evolution Protocol Overview” [Online]. Available.:

http://www.nxp.com/assets/documents/data/en/white-papers/LTEPTCLOVWWP.pdf, 2008.
 Physical Layer
LTE:
Transport blocks

Code block Channel Rate Code block

CRC addition
segmentation coding matching concatenation

Modulation Resource OFDM symbol

Scrambling
mapper mapping generation
Layer
Precoding
mapper
Modulation Resource OFDM symbol
Scrambling
mapper mapping generation

see: NXP, “Long Term Evolution Protocol Overview” [Online]. Available.:

http://www.nxp.com/assets/documents/data/en/white-papers/LTEPTCLOVWWP.pdf, 2008.
 The Internet
Wireless communications - one major trend since mid 1980s

Second major trend:

convergence of personal computers and networking into
the Internet

started off as packet-switching networks in labs and military

installations
“The first permanent ARPANET link was established on 21 November
1969, between the IMP at UCLA and the IMP at the Stanford Research
Institute.
By 5 December 1969, the entire four-node network was established.”
 The Internet
telephone engineers (“circuit switchers”) accept packet switching

# of computers 1985 2000

(devices) with
1987 30,000
access to the
Internet 1989 160,000

2010 12,500,000,000*
*
http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/ac79/docs/innov/IoT_IBSG_0411FINAL.pdf

1982: TCP/IP protocol suite formalized

1991: World Wide Web (WWW)
1993: Mosaic web browser released
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet
 And … the Internet of Things
(machine-to-machine communication)

Smart Traffic
Logistics/ Remote
Home/ safety and
Tracking health care Remote
Building control
manufacturing,
Industrial training,
Smart Smart application surgery
Smart grid
agriculture metering automation s and
control

low cost, low energy, ultra reliable

small data volumes, very low latency,
massive numbers very high availability

from Ericsson, “Cellular Networks for Massive IoT – Enabling Low Power Wide Area Applications”
[Online]. Available.: http://www.ericsson.com/res/docs/whitepapers/wp_iot.pdf (2016).
 And … the Internet of Things
“xx billion connected devices by 2020”
power consumption

WLANs
(WiFi Halow,
Cellular
IEEE 802.11ah)

⇘
(2G, 3G, 4G)

Short-range
wireless
Bluetooth
⇩
ZigBee Low power wide area
…

range
U. Raza, P. Kulkarni and M. Sooriyabandara, “Low Power Wide Area Networks: An
Overview,” IEEE Commun. Surveys & Tutorials, 2017 (preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.07360)
 LiFi…. 2015 Ted Talk

https://www.ted.com/talks/harald_haas_a_breakthrough_new_kind_of_wireless_internet#t-141898
Next Class …