Digital communications

Lecture 2
 Digital communications
 Digital communications is referred to as the transfer of a digital bit stream (data) from point A to point B
over a communication channel. It is also known as data transmission.
 Digital communication is the transfer of a digital bit stream (data) from the information source location
to the destination location over a communication channel.
 digital communication & analog communication
 Definition analog communication : The method of information transmission between transmitter and
receiver in which analog signals are used for conveying the information is known as analog
communication.
 type of signals used: Analog communication uses continuous time signals.
 Signal representation: In analog communication, the sinusoidal waveforms represent the signals used for
transferring information.
 Examples: - Sound shows analog signals
 Definition digital communication : The communication in which digital signals are used for transferring
information between transmitter and receiver is known as digital communication
 Type of signals used : Digital communication uses discrete time signals.
 Examples: - Computers use digital signals.
 Digital data have to be sent from the information source where the sender of the
information is located to the information destination where the person to receive the
information
 Information source: The information source is where the message communicated to
the destination originates. It is usually in the form of an information waveform.
 Source encoder: In the source encoder, the information waveforms such as texts,
audio, images, and videos are converted to bits.
 Source decoder: On the receiving side of the digital communication system, the
decoder converts the bits to waveforms.
 Channel encoder: The channel encoder is where the bits are converted into signal
waveforms.
 Channel decoder: The channel decoder converts the received waveform back to bits.
 Channel: The information from the source gets to the destination passing through a
communication channel. There are different types of communication channels
 Transmission Media
 Transmission media in computer networks is the physical media that
allows communication to take place from the source location to the
destination location
 The transmission media provides a physical connection between the
transmitter and the receiver.
 They are classified into two categories such as guided media and
unguided media.
 The guided media consists of twisted pair cable, coaxial cable, and
optical fiber cable.
 The unguided media consists of radio waves, microwaves, and infrared.
 Guided Media
 The guided transmission media is also known as the wired transmission media or
bound transmission media.
 This type of transmission media consists of cables that are tangible or have physical
existence and are limited geographically in a physical way.
 Twisted pair cable: There are two types of twisted pair cables—unshielded and
shielded pair cables.
1. Unshielded twisted pair (UTP): It has the capability to block interference.
The advantages of the unshielded twisted pair are that it is easy to install, has high-
speed capacity, and costs less.
The disadvantages of the UTP are that it only operates more efficiently for short
transmissions due to attenuation, can be affected by external interference, and has
lower performance and capacity when compared to shielded twisted pair (STP).
1.
2- Shielded twisted pair (STP): The STP is a cable that has a special jacket that blocks
external interference. It is used in fast data rate Ethernet and in data and voice channels
of telephone lines.
The advantages are that it is faster compared to other cables, has the ability to eliminate
crosstalk, and has better performance at a higher data rate when compared to UTP.
The disadvantages are that it is bulky, costs more, and is difficult to install and
manufacture when compared to other types of cables.
 Optical fiber cable: This type of cable is used for the transmission of large volumes of
data.
 The advantages are that it is light in weight, has less signal attenuation, has increased
bandwidth and capacity, has electromagnetic interference immunity, and has
resistance to corrosive materials.
 The disadvantages are that it is fragile, difficult to install and maintain, operates only
in a unidirectional way without additional fiber for bidirectional communication, and is
more expensive
 Coaxial cable: This type of cable has an outer plastic that covers two parallel
conductors having a separate insulated protection that covers each side.
 Information is transmitted in two modes, namely, broadband mode and baseband
mode.
 In the broadband mode, the cable bandwidth is split into separate ranges,
 while in the baseband mode, the cable bandwidth is dedicated.
 Coaxial cables are widely used by cable and analog televisions.
 The advantages of the coaxial cables are that they are easy to install and expand,
have better noise immunity, are less expensive, and have high bandwidth.
 The major disadvantage of the coaxial cable is that once there is a single cable failure
the entire network can be disrupted.
 Unguided Media

 The unguided media is also known as wireless transmission media or unbound

transmission media.
1. Radio waves can easily penetrate buildings, and they can be generated easily.
2. Microwaves: In the case of microwaves, the sending and receiving antennas
must be properly aligned because they use the line of sight transmission
technology.
3. Infrared waves: Infrared waves cannot penetrate through obstacles such as
buildings. This kind of technology is used in printers, TV remotes, keyboards,
and wireless mouse.
 to choose the best transmission media for any application, the following factors must be considered.
1. Bandwidth: This refers to the data-carrying capacity of a channel or medium. Lower bandwidth communication
channels support lower data rates, while higher bandwidth communication channels support higher data rates.
2. Delay: Delay consideration of any medium is very important in the transmitting and receiving of information from
the source location to the destination location.
3. Radiation: This means the consideration of the leakage of the signal from the medium due to undesirable
electrical characteristics of the medium.
4. Attenuation: It refers to the loss of energy as the signal propagates outward.
5. Number of receivers: Each attachment introduces some attenuation and distortion, limiting distance and/or data
rate.
6. Cost: There are many variables that can influence the cost of implementing a specific type of media.
7. Transmission impairments: Limit the distance a signal can travel.
8. Interference: Competing signals in overlapping frequency bands can distort or wipe out a signal.
9. Noise absorption: It refers to the susceptibility of the media to external electrical noise that can cause distortion
of data signal.
10. Ease of installation and maintenance: The complexity of the installation and maintenance of any transmission
media will determine how viable it will be in considering that media for any computer network transmission
application.
 Encoding
 In digital communications, information that is carried through the transmission
media is converted into a format that the communication system can understand
and process.
 The transmission processing needs that require encoded information include
application data processing. For example, the conversion of files, data storage and
data compression or decompression, data transmission, and data program
compilation and execution must be done before the information is transmitted to
the appropriate communication channel.
 Encoding can be categorized in two ways such as:
1. • Converting analog information to digital information for electronic systems.
2. • In the case of computer networking technology, the encoding process is applied
to the conversion of a specific code, such as numbers, letters, and symbols to
equivalent data information.
 Data Encoding
 The process of encoding data involves using different shapes of current or voltage levels
representing 1s and 0s of the digital information that has been encoded on the transmission
media computer network link.
1. Nonreturn to Zero (NRZ)
 In the NRZ encoding, it has 0 for low-voltage level and 1 for high-voltage level. The characteristic of
the NRZ encoding is that the voltage level remains constant during bit interval. It does not allow the
indication of the start or end of a bit while at the same time maintaining the same voltage level as
long as the value of the bit previously and currently is the same.
 there are two types of NRZ encoding techniques, and they are NRZ-L and NRZ-I.
 NRZ-L
 This is almost the same as the NRZ, only that there is a change in the polarity of the
first bit of the signal input as shown in Fig. 2.5. When the incoming signal changes
from 0 to 1 or from 1 to 0, the signal changes its polarity.
 NRZ-I
 In this case, there is no transition at the beginning of the bit interval when there is 0
at the incoming signal. However, there is a transition at the beginning of the bit
interval when there is 1 at the incoming signal
 Bi-phase Encoding
 The Bi-phase encoding process initially checks the signal level twice for every bit of time
and in the middle
 There are two types of Bi-phase encoding.
• Bi-phase Manchester
• Differential Manchester
1. Bi-phase Manchester
In the Bi-phase Manchester encoding, the transition is done at the middle of the bit interval
1. Differential Manchester
In the Differential Manchester encoding, the transition takes place in the middle of the bit
interval.
 RZ Encoding
The return to zero encoding is done as the signal
returns to zero between each pulse. It happens
no matter if a number of consecutive 0s or 1s
occur in the signal. It is a self-clocking signal.
 Bipolar Encoding
There are three types of bipolar encoding,
namely, Alternate Mark Inversion (AMI), Bipolar
8-Zero Substitution (B8ZS), and High-Density
Bipolar 3 (HDB3).
 AMI
This type of bipolar encoding system as shown in
Fig. 2.6 represents neutral (zero) voltage as
binary 0, and the alternating positive and
negative voltages are represented as binary 1.
 B8ZS
The B8ZS has a problem with synchronization being
lost when there is a stream of binary 0s being sent;
otherwise, it works very similar as the AMI by
changing poles for each binary 1. It is a common
technique used in the USA to avoid the
synchronization problem of long strings of binary 0s.
 HDB3
The HDB3 as shown in Fig. 2.6 uses four zeros
rather than eight as in the case of the B8ZS. A
violation takes place after the four zeros.
Synchronization is made possible and data retrieval
more accurate by the use of violations in the signal
that give it extra “edges.”
 Bit/Byte Stuffing
 What are byte stuffing and bit stuffing?
 Byte stuffing is a mechanism to convert a message formed of a sequence of bytes that may contain
reserved values such as frame delimiter, into another byte sequence that does not contain the reserved
values.
 Bit stuffing is the mechanism of inserting one or more non-information bits into a message to be
transmitted, to break up the message sequence, for synchronization purpose
 Purposes of byte stuffing and bit stuffing
 In Data Link layer, the stream of bits from physical layer are divided into data frames. The data frames
can be of fixed length or variable length. In variable - length framing, the size of each frame to be
transmitted may be different. So, a pattern of bits is used as a delimiter to mark the end of one frame
and the beginning of the next frame. However, if the pattern occurs in the message, then mechanisms
needs to be incorporated so that this situation is avoided.
 The two common approaches are −
 Byte - Stuffing − A byte is stuffed in the message to differentiate from the delimiter. This is also called
character-oriented framing.
 Bit - Stuffing − A pattern of bits of arbitrary length is stuffed in the message to differentiate from the
delimiter. This is also called bit - oriented framing.
 Multiplexing
 In any digital communication system or computer network system, information is fed to the
network from different sources via a common communication channel. All of this information from
different sources is combined before passing through the channel. The device that enables the
combination of the various sources is the multiplexer.
 Multiplexing is the process in which multiple data streams, coming from different sources, are
combined and transmitted over a single data channel or data transmission media.
There are two basic forms of multiplexing in digital communication systems or in a computer
network system. They are time division multiplexing
 (TDM) and frequency division multiplexing (FDM).
 A single channel is divided into non-overlapped time slots in a TDM.
 Data streams from different sources are divided into units with the same size and interleaved
successively into the time slots.
 In an FDM system, data streams are carried simultaneously on the same transmission medium by
allocating to each of them a different frequency band within the bandwidth of the single channel.
 Switching
 There are multiple parts in which information can be transmitted from the source
location to the destination location in any computer network.
 In digital communication systems, there are four types of switching methods.
 They are circuit switching, packet switching, message switching, and cell switching.
1. Circuit Switching
Circuit switching is a method that directly connects the transmitter and the receiver in
an unbroken path.
For example, in telephone switching equipment, a path is established that connects the
caller’s telephone to the receiver’s telephone by making a physical connection.
Multiplexing is done by a device called multiplexer (MUX). It is placed at the transmitting end of
the communication link. At the receiving end, the composite signal is separated by a device called
demultiplexer (DEMUX).

Demultiplexer
performs the reverse process of multiplexing and routes the separated signals to their
corresponding receivers or destinations. The multiplexing and demultiplexing technique in a
digital communication system or in a computer network system is shown in Fig. 2.7
2- Packet Switching
 Packet switching has two types, namely, virtual circuit and datagram. In the packet
switching methods, the information is broken into small parts, called packets. Each
packet is tagged with appropriate source and destination addresses.
 Packet switching has the advantage that it is cost-effective because switching devices
do not need a massive amount of secondary storage. It also offers improved delay
characteristics, because there are no long messages in the queue as the maximum
packet size is fixed.
 The disadvantage of packet switching is that the protocols for packet switching are
typically more complex. It can add some initial costs in implementation.
3- Message Switching
 In the case of message switching, there is no need to establish a dedicated path between two
stations quite unlike the circuit switching. The destination address is attached to the message when
a message is sent from a station. The message is then transmitted through the network, in its
entirety, from node to node. Each node receives the entire message, stores it in its entirety on disk,
and then transmits the message to the next node. This type of network is called a store-and-forward
network.
 One of the key advantages of message switching is that the channel efficiency can be greater
compared to circuit-switched systems because more devices are sharing the channel.
 The disadvantages include the fact that the message switching is not compatible with interactive
applications. The store-and-forward devices are expensive because they must have large disks to
hold potentially long messages.
4- Cell Switching
 In cell switching, there are similarities with packet switching,
except that the switching does not necessarily occur on packet
boundaries. This is ideal for an integrated environment and is
found within cell-based networks. Cell switching can handle
both digital voice and data signals.
 Some of the key advantages of cell switching include scalability,
high performance, dynamic bandwidth, and common LAN/WAN
architecture multimedia support. High performance is achieved
because this technology uses hardware switches. Cell switching
uses virtual circuit rather than physical circuit
 Cell switching has features of circuit switching, as it is a
connection-oriented service where each connection during its
set-up phase creates a virtual circuit
 A connection-oriented service can be a circuit-switched
connection or a virtual circuit connection in a packet-switched
network.
 Cell switching has a major disadvantage, and that is the fact
that it is an unreliable, connection-oriented packet-switched
data communications protocol.
 tasks

 What the difference between broadband mode and baseband mode.?