데이터통신과 네트워크

Ch. 3 Introduction to Physical Layer

2024 Fall
Introduction to Physical Layer
 Physical Layer
 One of the major functions of the physical layer is to move data in the form
of electromagnetic signals across a transmission medium
 Communication at the physical layer

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Data and Signals
 Analog and Digital Data
 Communication at the physical layer means exchanging signals
 Data need to be transmitted and received, but the media have to change data to signals
• Both data and the signals that represent them can be either analog or digital in form
 Analog data refers to information that is continuous
• Sounds made by a human voice, take on continuous values
 Digital data refers to information that has discrete states
• Data are stored in computer memory in the form of 0s and 1s

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Data and Signals
 Analog and Digital Signals
 Signals can be either analog or digital
 Analog signal has infinitely many levels of intensity over a period of time
• Curve representing the analog signal passes through an infinite number of points
 Digital signal can have only a limited number of defined values
• The sudden jump that the signal makes from value to value

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Periodic analog signals
 Sine Wave
 Can be classified as simple or composite
• A simple periodic analog signal, a sine wave, cannot be decomposed into simpler
signals
• A composite periodic analog signal is composed of multiple sine waves

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Periodic analog signals
 Sine Wave
 Peak Amplitude
• Absolute value of its highest intensity, proportional to the energy it carries
• For electric signals, peak amplitude is normally measured in volts

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Periodic analog signals
 Sine Wave
 Period and Frequency
• Period refers to the amount of time, in seconds, a signal needs to complete 1 cycle
• Frequency refers to the number of periods in 1s
• Period is the inverse of frequency, and frequency is the inverse of period

and

• Period is formally expressed in seconds

• Frequency is formally expressed in Hertz (Hz), which is cycle per second

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Appendix
 Units of period and frequency

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Periodic analog signals
 Sine Wave
 Phase
• Phase, or phase shift, describes the position of the waveform relative to time 0
– If we think of the wave as something that can be shifted backward or forward along the
time axis, phase describes the amount of that shift
– Phase is measured in degrees or radians
 A phase shift of 360º corresponds to a shift of a complete period
 A phase shift of 180° corresponds to a shift of one-half of a period
 A phase shift of 90º corresponds to a shift of one-quarter of a period

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Periodic analog signals
 Wavelength
 Another characteristic of a signal traveling through a transmission medium
• Wavelength binds the period or the frequency of a simple sine wave to the
propagation speed of the medium
– The wavelength is the distance a simple signal can travel in one period
– Wavelength can be calculated if one is given the propagation speed (the speed of light)
and the period of the signal

– Wavelength = (propagation speed) x period =

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Periodic analog signals
 Time and Frequency Domains
 The time-domain plot shows changes in signal amplitude with respect to time
 The frequency-domain plot is concerned with only the peak value and the
frequency
 The advantage of the frequency domain is that we can immediately see the
values of the frequency and peak amplitude
• A complete sine wave is represented by one spike

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Periodic analog signals
 Time and Frequency Domains
 The frequency domain is more compact and useful when we are dealing with
more than one sine wave
• Figure shows three sine waves, each with different amplitude and frequency.
• All can be represented by three spikes in the frequency domain.

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Periodic analog signals
 Composite Signals
 Simple sine waves have many applications in daily life
• We can send a single sine wave to carry electric energy from one place to
another
– For example, the power company sends a single sine wave with a frequency of 60 Hz to
distribute electric energy to houses and businesses
– We can use a single sine wave to send an alarm to a security center when a burglar
opens a door or window in the house

 We need to send a composite signal to communicate data

 A composite signal is made of many simple sine waves

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Periodic analog signals
 Composite Signals
 A periodic composite signal with frequency f

• The frequency of the sine wave with frequency f is the same as the frequency of
the composite signal
• It is called the fundamental frequency, or first harmonic

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Periodic analog signals
 Composite Signals
 The time and frequency domains of a nonperiodic signal
• Signal created by a microphone or a telephone set when a word or two is
pronounced

– In a time-domain representation of this composite signal, there are an infinite number

of simple sine frequencies
– A normal human being can create a continuous range of frequencies between 0 and 4 kHz
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Periodic analog signals
 Bandwidth
 The range of frequencies contained in a composite signal is its bandwidth
• For example, if a composite signal contains frequencies between 1000 and 5000, its
bandwidth is 5000 1000, or 4000
• The bandwidth of the periodic signal contains all integer frequencies between 1000 and
5000 (1000, 1001, 1002, . . .)
• The bandwidth of the nonperiodic signals has the same range, but the frequencies are
continuous

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Digital signals
 Digital signals
 Information can also be represented by a digital signal
 1 can be encoded as a positive voltage and a 0 as zero voltage
• A digital signal can have more than two levels
– In this case, we can send more than 1 bit for each level

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Digital signals
 Bit Rate
 Bit rate is the number of bits sent in 1s, expressed in bits per second (bps)

 Bit Length
 Bit length is the distance one bit occupies on the transmission medium

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Digital signals
 Digital Signal as a Composite Analog Signal
 A digital signal, in the time domain, comprises connected vertical and
horizontal line segments
• A vertical line in the time domain means a frequency of infinity (sudden change in time)
• A horizontal line in the time domain means a frequency of zero (no change in time)
• Going from a frequency of zero to a frequency of infinity (and vice versa) implies all
frequencies in between are part of the domain

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Digital signals
 Transmission of Digital Signals
 We can transmit a digital signal by using one of two different approaches:
① Baseband transmission
– Sending a digital signal over a channel without changing the digital signal to an analog
signal
② Broadband transmission (using modulation)
– Changing the digital signal to an analog signal for transmission

<Baseband transmission>

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Digital signals
 Transmission of Digital Signals
 Case 1: Low-Pass Channel with Wide Bandwidth
• If we want to preserve the exact form of a nonperiodic digital signal, we need to
send the entire spectrum
– The continuous range of frequencies between zero and infinity
• If we have a medium, such as a coaxial or fiber optic cable, with a very wide
bandwidth, two stations can communicate by using digital signals with very good
accuracy (but not perfect)
– Although the output signal is not an exact replica of the original signal, the data can still
be deduced from the received signal

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Digital signals
 Transmission of Digital Signals
 Case 2: Low-Pass Channel with Limited Bandwidth
• Let us assume that we have a digital signal of bit rate N
• We need an analog signal of frequency

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Digital signals
 Transmission of Digital Signals
 Case 2: Low-Pass Channel with Limited Bandwidth
• To make the shape of the analog signal look more like that of a digital signal, we
need to add more harmonics of the frequencies
– We can increase the bandwidth to , , , and so on

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Digital signals
 Transmission of Digital Signals
 Broadband Transmission (Using Modulation)
• Changing the digital signal to an analog signal for transmission
• Modulation allows us to use a bandpass channel — a channel with a bandwidth
that does not start from zero

<Bandwidth of a bandpass channel>

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Digital signals
 Transmission of Digital Signals
 Broadband Transmission (Using Modulation)
• Digital signal is converted to a composite analog signal
• We have used a single-frequency analog signal (called a carrier); the amplitude of
the carrier has been changed to look like the digital signal

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Transmission impairment
 Imperfection
 The imperfection causes signal impairment
 This means that the signal at the beginning of the medium is not the same as
the signal at the end of the medium
• Three causes of impairment are attenuation, distortion, and noise

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Transmission impairment
 Attenuation
 Attenuation means a loss of energy
• When a signal, simple or composite, travels through a medium, it loses some of its
energy in overcoming the resistance of the medium
– That is why a wire carrying electric signals gets warm, if not hot, after a while
– Some of the electrical energy in the signal is converted to heat
• To compensate for this loss, amplifiers are used to amplify the signal

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Transmission impairment
 Attenuation
 Decibel
• To show that a signal has lost or gained strength, engineers use the unit of the
decibel
• The decibel (dB) measures the relative strengths of two signals or one signal at
two different points
– Note that the decibel is negative if a signal is attenuated and positive if a signal is
amplified

– Variables and are the powers of a signal at points 1 and 2

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Transmission impairment
 Attenuation
 Example
• A signal travels from point 1 to point 4. The signal is attenuated by the time it
reaches point 2
• Between points 2 and 3, the signal is amplified.
• Again, between points 3 and 4, the signal is attenuated.

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Transmission impairment
 Distortion
 Distortion means that the signal changes its form or shape
• Distortion can occur in a composite signal made of different frequencies
– Each signal component has its own propagation speed through a medium and, therefore,
its own delay in arriving at the final destination
• Differences in delay may create a difference in phase if the delay is not exactly the
same as the period duration

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Transmission impairment
 Noise
 Several types of noise, such as thermal noise, induced noise, crosstalk, and
impulse noise, may corrupt the signal
• Thermal noise: the random motion of electrons in a wire, which creates an extra signal
not originally sent by the transmitter
• Crosstalk: the effect of one wire on the other. One wire acts as a sending antenna and the
other as the receiving antenna
• Impulse noise: a spike (a signal with high energy in a very short time) that comes from
power lines, lightning, and so on

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Transmission impairment
 Noise
 Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR)
• the ratio of the signal power to the noise power

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Data rate limits
 Design of communication system
 A very important consideration in data communications is how fast we can
send data, in bits per second, over a channel
 Data rate depends on three factors:
① The bandwidth available
② The level of the signals we use
③ The quality of the channel (the level of noise)

 Two theoretical formulas were developed to calculate the data rate

① Nyquist for a noiseless channel
② Shannon for a noisy channel

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Data rate limits
 Noiseless Channel: Nyquist Bit Rate
 Nyquist bit rate formula defines the theoretical maximum bit rate

• bandwidth is the bandwidth of the channel

• is the number of signal levels used to represent data
• BitRate is the bit rate in bits per second

(Observation)
• Given a specific bandwidth, we can have any bit rate we want by increasing the
number of signal levels
– The idea is theoretically correct, practically there is a limit. When we increase the
number of signal levels, we impose a burden on the receiver Decrease the reliability

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Data rate limits
 Noisy Channel: Shannon Capacity
 In reality, we cannot have a noiseless channel; the channel is always noisy
 In 1944, Claude Shannon introduced a formula, called the Shannon
capacity, to determine the theoretical highest data rate for a noisy channel:

• bandwidth is the bandwidth of the channel

• SNR is the signal-to-noise ratio
• Capacity is the capacity of the channel in bits per second

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Appendix
 Fourier analysis
 A tool that changes a time-domain signal to a frequency-domain signal and
vice versa
 Fourier Series
• A composite periodic signal with period T (frequency f ) can be decomposed
into a series of sine and cosine functions
– Each function is an integral harmonic of the fundamental frequency f of the composite signal

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Appendix
 Examples
 Finding the Fourier series of a periodic square function

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Appendix
 Examples
 Finding the Fourier series for a sawtooth signal

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Appendix
 Fourier Transform
 Fourier transform gives the continuous frequency domain of a nonperiodic
signal
• We can create a continuous frequency domain from a nonperiodic time-domain
function and vice versa

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Appendix
 Example
 Finding the Fourier transform of a square pulse

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Thank You