Transmission Media

The purpose of the physical layer is to transport a raw bit stream from one
machine to another. Various physical media can be used for the actual
transmission. Each one has its own advantage/disadvantage in terms of
bandwidth, delay, cost, and ease of installation and maintenance. Media are
roughly grouped into guided media, such as copper wire and fiber optics, and
unguided media, such as radio and lasers through the air

Transmission media 1. Guided media

Magnetic media
Twisted pair
Baseband coxial cable
Brodband coxial cable
Fibre optics
2. Unguided media
Wireless transmission
Radio
Microwave

Some factors need to be considered for designing the transmission media:

o Bandwidth: All the factors are remaining constant, the greater the
bandwidth of a medium, the higher the data transmission rate of a signal.
o Transmission impairment: When the received signal is not identical to the
transmitted one due to the transmission impairment. The quality of the
signals will get destroyed due to transmission impairment.
o Interference: An interference is defined as the process of disrupting a signal
when it travels over a communication medium on the addition of some
unwanted signal.

Guided Transmission Media

1.Magnetic Media
One of the most common ways to transport data from one computer to another
is to write them onto magnetic tape or removable media (e.g., recordable
DVDs), physically transport the tape or disks to the destination machine, and
read them back in again. It is often more cost effective, especially for
applications in which high bandwidth or cost per bit transported is the key
factor.

A simple calculation will make this point clear. An industry standard Ultrium
tape can hold 200 gigabytes. A box 60 x 60 x 60 cm can hold about 1000 of
these tapes, for a total capacity of 200 terabytes, or 1600 terabits (1.6 petabits).
A box of tapes can be delivered anywhere in the United States in 24 hours by
Federal Express and other companies. The effective bandwidth of this
transmission is 1600 terabits/86,400 sec, or 19 Gbps. If the destination is only
an hour away by road, the bandwidth is increased to over 400 Gbps. No
computer network can even approach this.

2 Twisted Pair

Although the bandwidth characteristics of magnetic tape are excellent, the

delay characteristics are poor. Transmission time is measured in minutes or
hours, not milliseconds.

For many applications an on-line connection is needed. One of the oldest and
still most common transmission media is twisted pair. A twisted pair consists of
two insulated copper wires, typically about 1 mm thick. The wires are twisted
together in a helical form, just like a DNA molecule. Twisting is done because
two parallel wires constitute a fine antenna. When the wires are twisted, the

waves from different twists cancel out, so the wire radiates less effectively.

The most common application of the twisted pair is the telephone system.
Twisted pairs can run several kilometers without amplification, but for longer
distance repeaters are needed.
This is the most frequently used type of transmission media and it is available in two
types.

UTP (Unshielded Twisted Pair):This UTP cable has the capacity to block
interference. It doesn’t depend on a physical guard and used in telephonic
applications. The advantage of UTP is a low cost, very simple to install, and high
speed. The disadvantages of UTP is liable to exterior interference, transmits in fewer
distances, and less capacity.
STP (Shielded Twisted Pair):STP cable includes a particular jacket for blocking
outside interference. It is used in rapid data rate Ethernet, in voice & data channels
of telephone lines.
The main advantages of STP cable mainly include good speed, removes crosstalk.
The main disadvantages are hard to manufacture as well as install, It is expensive
and bulky also.

Twisted pairs can be used for transmitting either analog or digital signals.

Category 3 twisted pairs consist of two insulated wires gently twisted together.
Four such pairs are typically grouped in a plastic sheath to protect the wires and
keep them together. Prior to about 1988, most office buildings had one
category 3 cable running from a central wiring closet on each floor into
each office.

Starting around 1988, the more advanced category 5 twisted pairs were
introduced. They are similar to category 3 pairs, but with more twists per
centimeter, which results in less crosstalk and a better-quality signal over
longer distances, making them more suitable for high-speed computer
communication.

Up-and-coming categories are 6 and 7, which are capable of handling

signals with bandwidths of 250 MHz and 600 MHz, respectively (versus a
mere 16 MHz and 100 MHz for categories 3 and 5, respectively).
3 Base band Coaxial Cable

Another common transmission medium is the coaxial cable (known to its many
friends as just ''coax'' and pronounced ''co-ax''). It has better shielding than
twisted pairs, so it can span longer distances at higher speeds. Two kinds of
coaxial cable are widely used. One kind, 50-ohm cable, is commonly used
when it is intended for digital transmission from the start.

The other kind, 75-ohm cable, is commonly used for analog transmission
and cable television but is becoming more important with the advent of
Internet over cable. This distinction is based on historical, rather than technical,
factors (e.g., early dipole antennas had an impedance of 300 ohms, and it was
easy to use existing 4:1 impedance matching transformers).

A coaxial cable consists of a stiff copper wire as the core, surrounded by an

insulating material. The insulator is encased by a cylindrical conductor, often as
a closely-woven braided mesh. The outer conductor is covered in a protective
plastic sheath. A cutaway view of a coaxial cable is shown in Fig. 2-4.

The construction and shielding of the coaxial cable give it a good combination
of high bandwidth and excellent noise immunity. The bandwidth possible
depends on the cable quality, length, and signal-to-noise ratio of the data signal.
Modern cables have a bandwidth of close to 1 GHz. Coaxial cables used to be
widely within the telephone system for long-distance lines but have now largely
been replaced by fiber optics on long-haul routes. Coax is still widely used for
cable television and metropolitan area networks, however.
Broadband coxial cable:
Uses analog transmission in television and cover large area require analog amplifire

Broadband comes from teleohone any thing wider than 4kHz

In computer world broadband means cable using analog transmission

This can use 300 MHz and can run upto 100 KM due to analog signal

To tranmit digital signal on these lines convertor( is required for in commimng and outgoing)

4. Fiber Optics

An optical transmission system has

three key components:

the light source,

the transmission medium,

and the detector.

Conventionally, a pulse of light indicates a 1 bit and the absence of light

indicates a 0 bit.

The transmission medium is an ultra-thin fiber of glass. The detector generates

an electrical pulse when light falls on it. By attaching a light source to one end
of an optical fiber and a detector to the other, we have a unidirectional data
transmission system that accepts an electrical signal, converts and transmits it
by light pulses, and then reconverts the output to an electrical signal at the
receiving end.

This transmission system would leak light and be useless in practice except for
an interesting principle of physics. When a light ray passes from one medium to
another, for example, from fused silica to air, the ray is refracted (bent) at the
silica/air boundary, as shown in Fig. 2-5(a). Here we see a light ray incident on
the boundary at an angle B1 emerging at an angle B1. The amount of refraction
depends on the properties of the two media (in particular, their indices of
refraction). For angles of incidence above a certain critical value, the light is
refracted back into the silica; none of it escapes into the air. Thus, a light ray
incident at or above the critical angle is trapped inside the fiber, as shown in
Fig. 2-5(b), and can propagate for many kilometers with virtually no loss.

The sketch of Fig. 2-5(b) shows only one trapped ray, but since any light ray
incident on the boundary above the critical angle will be reflected internally,
many different rays will be bouncing around at different angles. Each ray is said
to have a different mode, so a fiber having this property is called a multimode
fiber.

Figure 2-7. (a) Side view of a single fiber. (b) End view of a sheath with
three fibers.
Advantages

 Less attenuation: (signal loss) Information travels roughly 10 times further

before it needs amplifying—which makes fiber networks simpler and cheaper to
operate and maintain.
 No interference: Unlike with copper cables, there's no "crosstalk"
(electromagnetic interference) between optical fibers, so they transmit
information more reliably with better signal quality
 Higher bandwidth: As we've already seen, fiber-optic cables can carry far more
data than copper cables of the same diameter.

The disadvantages are high cost, fragile, installation & maintenance is difficult and
unidirectional.

Fiber Cables

Fiber optic cables are similar to coax, except without the braid. Figure 2-7(a)
shows a single fiber viewed from the side. At the center is the glass core
through which the light propagates. In multimode fibers, the core is typically 50
microns in diameter, about the thickness of a human hair. In single-mode fibers,
the core is 8 to 10 microns.