IN 1501

Data Communication

Lesson 6.3: Analog Data, Digital Signal

 Analog Data, Digital Signal

• Process of converting analog data into digital data; this process is known
as digitization.
• Once analog data have been converted into digital data, a number of
things can happen.
1. The digital data can be transmitted using NRZ-L. In this case, we have in fact
gone directly from analog data to a digital signal.

2. The digital data can be encoded as a digital signal using a code other than
NRZ-L. Thus an extra step is required.

3. The digital data can be converted into an analog signal, using one of the
modulation techniques.

2
 Analog Data, Digital Signal

Figure 6.1 Digitizing Analog Data

• The device used for converting analog data into digital form for
transmission, and subsequently recovering the original analog data from
the digital, is known as a codec (coder-decoder).
• In this section we examine the two principal techniques used in codecs,
– Pulse code modulation (PCM)
– Delta modulation (DM)

3
 Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)

• Pulse code modulation (PCM) is based on the sampling theorem.

SAMPLING THEOREM:
• If a signal f(t) is sampled at regular intervals of time and at a rate higher
than twice the highest signal frequency, then the samples contain all the
information of the original signal.
• The function f(t) may be reconstructed from these samples by the use of a
lowpass filter.

4
 Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)

• If voice data are limited to frequencies below 4000 Hz, a conservative

procedure for intelligibility, 8000 samples per second would be sufficient
to characterize the voice signal completely.
• Note, however, that these are analog samples, called pulse amplitude
modulation (PAM) samples.
• To convert to digital, each of these analog samples must be assigned a
binary code.

5
Figure 6.2 Pulse Code Modulation Example
6
 Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)

• Figure shows an example in which the original signal is assumed to be

bandlimited with a bandwidth of B.
• PAM samples are taken at a rate of 2B, or once every Ts = 1/2B seconds.
• Each PAM sample is approximated by being quantized into one of 16
different levels.
• Each sample can then be represented by 4 bits.

7
 Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)

• But because the quantized values are only approximations, it is impossible

to recover the original signal exactly.
• By using an 8-bit sample, which allows 256 quantizing levels, the quality of
the recovered voice signal is comparable with that achieved via analog
transmission.
• Note that this implies that a data rate of 8000 samples per second * 8 bits
per sample = 64 kbps is needed for a single voice signal.

8
 PCM vs PAM

• Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) is A Technique to convert An Analog Signal

to Digital Signal via Modulation Method Techniques.
• It contains sampling & quantization which cuts the pulse according to
given time interval over a period.
• Whereas Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM) is a Technique to modulate
the power or energy of a signal.
• So that it can transmit to a longer distance (ie. boosts the Signal).
• PAM doesn't convert Analog Signal to Digital.

9
Pulse Amplitude
PAMModulation (PAM)

Figure 6.3 Quantized PAM Signal 10

Figure 6.4 Quantizing Using Sign and Magnitude

Figure 6.5 PCM

11
From Analog to PCM

Figure 6.6 From Analog to PCM

12
 Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)

• Thus, PCM starts with a continuous-time, continuous-amplitude (analog)

signal, from which a digital signal is produced (Figure 6.7).
• The digital signal consists of blocks of n bits, where each n-bit number is
the amplitude of a PCM pulse.
• On reception, the process is reversed to reproduce the analog signal.
• Notice, however, that this process violates the terms of the sampling
theorem.
• By quantizing the PAM pulse, the original signal is now only approximated
and cannot be recovered exactly.

• This effect is known as quantizing error or quantizing noise.

13
 Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)

Figure 6.7 PCM Block Diagram

• The signal-to-noise ratio for quantizing noise can be expressed as;

14
 Nonlinear Encoding

• The PCM scheme is refined using a technique known as nonlinear

encoding, which means, in effect, that the quantization levels are not
equally spaced.
• The problem with equal spacing is that the mean absolute error for each
sample is the same, regardless of signal level.
• Consequently, lower amplitude values are relatively more distorted.
• By using a greater number of quantizing steps for signals of low amplitude,
and a smaller number of quantizing steps for signals of large amplitude, a
marked reduction in overall signal distortion is achieved (e.g., see Figure
6.8).

15
Nonlinear Encoding

Figure 6.8 Effect of Nonlinear Coding

16
 Nonlinear Encoding

• The same effect can be achieved by using uniform quantizing but

companding (compressing-expanding) the input analog signal.
• Companding is a process that compresses the intensity range of a signal by
imparting more gain to weak signals than to strong signals on input.
• At output, the reverse operation is performed.
• Note that the effect on the input side is to compress the sample so that
the higher values are reduced with respect to the lower values.

17
 Nonlinear Encoding

• Thus, with a fixed number of quantizing levels, more levels are available
for lower-level signals.
• On the output side, the compander expands the samples so the
compressed values are restored to their original values.
• Nonlinear encoding can significantly improve the PCM SNR ratio.
• For voice signals, improvements of 24 to 30 dB have been achieved.

18
Nonlinear Encoding

Figure 6.9 Typical Companding Functions

19
 Delta Modulation (DM)

• Popular alternatives to PCM is delta modulation (DM).

• With delta modulation, an analog input is approximated by a staircase
function that moves up or down by one quantization level () at each
sampling interval (Ts).
• The principal advantage of DM over PCM is the simplicity of its
implementation.
• In general, PCM exhibits better SNR characteristics at the same data rate.
• An example is shown in Figure, where the staircase function is overlaid on
the original analog waveform.

20
Figure 6.10 Example of Delta Modulation
21
 Delta Modulation (DM)

• The important characteristic of this staircase function is that its behavior is

binary: At each sampling time, the function moves up or down a constant
amount  .

• Thus, the output of the delta modulation process can be represented as a

single binary digit for each sample.

• In essence, a bit stream is produced by approximating the derivative of an

analog signal rather than its amplitude: A 1 is generated if the staircase
function is to go up during the next interval; a 0 is generated otherwise.
• The transition (up or down) that occurs at each sampling interval is chosen
so that the staircase function tracks the original analog waveform as
closely as possible.

22
 Delta Modulation (DM)

• Figure 6.11 illustrates the logic of the process, which is essentially a feedback
mechanism.
• For transmission, the following occurs: At each sampling time, the analog input is
compared to the most recent value of the approximating staircase function.
• If the value of the sampled waveform exceeds that of the staircase function, a 1 is
generated; otherwise, a 0 is generated.
• Thus, the staircase is always changed in the direction of the input signal.
• The output of the DM process is therefore a binary sequence that can be used at
the receiver to reconstruct the staircase function.
• The staircase function can then be smoothed by some type of integration process
or by passing it through a lowpass filter to produce an analog approximation of the
analog input signal.

23
Figure 6.11 Delta Modulation 24
 Delta Modulation (DM)

• There are two important parameters in a DM scheme: the size of the step assigned
to each binary digit , and the sampling rate.

• As Figure 6.10 illustrates,  must be chosen to produce a balance between two

types of errors or noise.

• When the analog waveform is changing very slowly, there will be quantizing noise.

• This noise increases as is increased.

• On the other hand, when the analog waveform is changing more rapidly than the
staircase can follow, there is slope overload noise.

• This noise increases as is decreased.

• It should be clear that the accuracy of the scheme can be improved by increasing
the sampling rate. However, this increases the data rate of the output signal.

25
 Performance

• Good voice reproduction

– PCM - 128 quantization levels or 7-bit coding (27 = 128)
– Voice occupies a bandwidth 4khz
– samples should be taken at a rate of 8000 x 7 = 56 kbps for PCM-encoded
digital data

• Data compression can improve on this

• e.g. Interframe coding techniques for video

• Analog encoding of digital signals has a more uniform spectral content over the
bandwidth and therefore contains more high-frequency components.

• Studies have shown that, because of the presence of these higher frequencies,
PCM-related techniques are preferable to DM-related techniques for digitizing
analog signals that represent digital data.

26
END

27