Physical LAYER Seshadripuram

CHAPTER – 02
PHYSICAL LAYER
Transmission Media:
A communication channel that carries the information from sender to receiver. Data is transmitted
through electromagnetic signals.

 The main functionality of the transmission media is to carry the information in the
form of bits through LAN (Local Area Network)

 The electrical signals can be sent through the copper wire, fibre optics,
atmosphere, water, and vacuum.

Transmission media is of two types wired media and wireless media. In wired media, medium
characteristics are more important whereas, in wireless media, signal characteristics are more
important.

Causes of Transmission Impairment:

 Attenuation: The loss of energy, i.e., the strength of the signal decreases with
increasing the distance which causes the loss of energy

 Distortion: Occurs when there is a change in the shape of the signal. This type
of distortion is examined from different signals having different frequencies.

 Noise: When data is travelled over a transmission medium, some unwanted

signal is added to it which creates the noise.

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Classification of Transmission Media:

Guided Media
1. Coaxial Cable:

 A very commonly used transmission media, eg: TV wire is usually a coaxial

cable.
 It contains two conductors parallel to each other.
 It has a higher frequency as compared to Twisted pair cable.

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 The inner conductor is made up of copper, and the outer conductor is made up of
copper mesh. The middle core is made up of non-conductive cover that separates
the inner conductor from the outer conductor.
 The middle core is responsible for the data transferring whereas the copper mesh
prevents from the EMI (Electromagnetic interference).

Types of coaxial cables:

 Baseband transmission: The process of transmitting a single signal at high

speed.
 Broadband transmission: The process of transmitting multiple signals
simultaneously.

Advantages of Coaxial cable:

 The data can be transmitted at high speed.

 It has better shielding as compared to twisted pair cable.
 It provides higher bandwidth.

Disadvantages of Coaxial cable:

 It is more expensive as compared to twisted pair cable.

 If any fault occurs in the cable causes the failure in the entire network.

2. Fibre Optic
 A cable that uses electrical signals for communication.
 It that holds the optical fibres coated in plastic that are used to send the data by
pulses of light.
 The plastic coating protects the optical fibres from heat, cold, electromagnetic
interference from other types of wiring.
 Provide faster data transmission than copper wires.

Basic elements of Fibre optic cable:

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 Core: The optical fibre consists of a narrow strand of glass or plastic known as a core.
A core is a light transmission area of the fibre. The more the area of the core, the more
light will be transmitted into the fibre.

 Cladding: The concentric layer of glass is known as cladding. The main

functionality of the cladding is to provide the lower refractive index at the core
interface as to cause the reflection within the core so that the light waves are
transmitted through the fibre.

 Jacket: The protective coating consisting of plastic is known as a jacket. The main
purpose of a jacket is to preserve the fibre strength, absorb shock and extra fibre
protection.

Advantages of Fibre Optic:

• Greater Bandwidth: The fibre optic cable provides more bandwidth as
compared copper.

• Faster speed: Fibre optic cable carries the data in the form of light. This
allows the fibre optic cable to carry the signals at a higher speed.

• Longer distances: The fibre optic cable carries the data at a longer distance
as compared to copper cable.

• Better reliability: The fibre optic cable is more reliable than the copper cable
as it is immune to any temperature changes while it can cause obstruct in the
connectivity of copper cable.

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• Thinner: Fibre optic cable is thinner and lighter in weight so it can withstand
more pull pressure than copper cable.

3. Twisted pair:

 A physical media made up of a pair of cables twisted with each other.

 Cheap as compared to other transmission media.
 Installation is easy, and it is a lightweight cable.
 The frequency range for twisted pair cable is from 0 to 3.5KHz.
 Consists of two insulated copper wires arranged in a regular spiral pattern.

Types of Twisted pair:

Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP): consists of two insulated copper wires

twisted around one another. An unshielded twisted pair is widely used in
telecommunication.

Advantages Of Unshielded Twisted Pair:

 It is cheap.

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 Installation of the unshielded twisted pair is easy.

 It can be used for high-speed LAN.

Disadvantage of Unshielded Twisted Pair:

 This cable can only be used for shorter distances because of attenuation.

Shielded Twisted Pair

 A cable that contains the mesh surrounding the wire that allows the higher
transmission rate.
 The cost of the shielded twisted pair cable is not very high and not very low.
 An installation of STP is easy.
 It has higher capacity as compared to unshielded twisted pair cable.
 It has a higher attenuation.
 Provides the higher data transmission rate

Disadvantages
 It is more expensive as compared to UTP and coaxial cable.
 It has a higher attenuation rate.

Unguided Transmission
 It transmits the electromagnetic waves without using any physical medium.
 Therefore, it is also known as wireless transmission.

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 In unguided media, air is the media through which the electromagnetic energy can
flow easily.

1. Radio waves

 The electromagnetic waves that are transmitted in all the directions of free space.
 Radio waves are omnidirectional.
 The range in frequencies of radio waves is from 3Khz to 1 khz.
 The sending and receiving antenna are not aligned, i.e., the wave sent by the
sending antenna can be received by any receiving antenna.
 Eg: FM radio.

Advantages of Radio transmission:

 It’s mainly used for wide area networks and mobile cellular phones.
 It covers a large area, and they can penetrate the walls.
 Provides a higher transmission rate.

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2. Microwaves

A line-of-sight transmission i.e. the sending and receiving antennas need to be properly aligned
with each other.

 The distance covered by the signal is directly proportional to the height of the
antenna. Frequency Range:1GHz – 300GHz.
 These are majorly used for mobile phone communication and television
distribution.

Advantages of Microwave:
 Cheaper than using cables.
 It is free from land acquisition as it does not require any land for the
installation of cables.
 Provides an easy communication in terrains as the installation of cable in
terrain is quite a difficult task.
 Communication over oceans can be achieved by using microwave
transmission.

3. Infrared:
Used for very short distance communication. Cannot penetrate through obstacles. This
prevents interference between systems. Frequency Range:300GHz – 400THz. Used
in TV remotes, wireless mouse, keyboard, printer, etc.

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Multiplexing:

A technique used to combine and send the multiple data streams over a single medium. The
process of combining the data streams is known as multiplexing and hardware used for
multiplexing is known as a multiplexer.

Why Multiplexing?
The sharing of a medium or bandwidth. It is the process in which multiple signals coming
from multiple sources are combined and transmitted over a single
communication/physical line.

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History of Multiplexing

 It’s widely used in telecommunications in which several telephone calls are carried
through a single wire.
 Originated in telegraphy in the early 1870s and is now widely used in communication.
 George Owen Squier developed the telephone carrier multiplexing in 1910. ▪ The 'n'
input lines are transmitted through a multiplexer and multiplexer combines the signals to
form a composite signal.
 The composite signal is passed through a Demultiplexer and demultiplexer separates a
signal to component signals and transfers them to their respective destinations.

Advantages of Multiplexing:

 More than one signal can be sent over a single medium. ▪ The bandwidth of a medium
can be utilized effectively.

Types of Multiplexing:

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Frequency-division Multiplexing (FDM)

 It is an analog technique.
 A technique in which the available bandwidth of a single transmission medium is
subdivided into several channels.

 In the above diagram, a single transmission medium is subdivided into several

frequency channels, and each frequency channel is given to different devices.
 Device 1 has a frequency channel of range from 1 to 5.
 The input signals are translated into frequency bands by using modulation
techniques, and they are combined by a multiplexer to form a composite signal.
 The main aim of the FDM is to subdivide the available bandwidth into different
frequency channels and allocate them to different devices. ▪ Using the modulation
technique, the input signals are transmitted into frequency bands and then combined
to form a composite signal.

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Advantages Of FDM:

 FDM is used for analog signals.

 FDM process is very simple and easy modulation.
 A Large number of signals can be sent through an FDM simultaneously. ▪ It does not
require any synchronization between sender and receiver.

Disadvantages Of FDM:

 FDM technique is used only when low-speed channels are required.

 It suffers the problem of crosstalk.
 Large number of modulators are required.
 It requires a high bandwidth channel.

Time Division Multiplexing (TDM)

 Each user periodically gets the entire bandwidth for a small burst of time, i.e. entire
channel is dedicated to one user but only for a short period of time.
 It is very extensively used in computer communication and telecommunication.
Sharing of the channel is accomplished by dividing available transmission time on a
medium among users.
 It exclusively uses Digital signals instead of dividing the cable into frequency bands.
TDM splits cable usage into time slots.
 The data rate of transmission media exceeds the data rate of signals. Uses a frame
and one slot for each slice of time and the time slots are transmitted whether the
source has data or not.

Synchronous Time Division Multiplexing

 A technique in which time slot is pre-assigned to every device.
 Each device is given some time slot irrespective of the fact that the device contains the
data or not.

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 If the device does not have any data, then the slot will remain empty.
 Signals are sent in the form of frames. Time slots are organized in the form of frames. If a
device does not have data for a particular time slot, then the empty slot will be
transmitted.
 The most popular Synchronous TDM are T-1 multiplexing, ISDN multiplexing, and
SONET multiplexing.
 If there are n devices, then there are n slots.

Asynchronous Time Division Multiplexing

 Also known as Statistical TDM.
 A technique in which time slots are not fixed as in the case of Synchronous TDM. Time
slots are allocated to only those devices which have the data to send. Therefore, we can
say that Asynchronous Time Division multiplexor transmits only the data from active
workstations.
 An asynchronous TDM technique dynamically allocates the time slots to the devices.
 In Asynchronous TDM, total speed of the input lines can be greater than the capacity of
the channel.
 It accepts the incoming data streams and creates a frame that contains only data with no
empty slots.
 Each slot contains an address part that identifies the source of the data.

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Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM)

 Its same as FDM except that the optical signals are transmitted through the fibre optic
cable.
 WDM is used on fibre optics to increase the capacity of a single fibre.
 It is used to utilize the high data rate capability of fibre optic cable.
 It is an analog multiplexing technique.

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 Optical signals from different source are combined to form a wider band of light with the
help of multiplexer.
 At the receiving end, demultiplexer separates the signals to transmit them to their
respective destinations.
 Multiplexing and Demultiplexing can be achieved by using a prism.
 Prism can perform a role of multiplexer by combining the various optical signals to form
a composite signal, and the composite signal is transmitted through a fibre optical cable.
 Prism also performs a reverse operation, i.e., demultiplexing the signal

Switching: When a user accesses the internet or another computer network outside their
immediate location, messages are sent through the network of transmission media. This
technique of transferring the information from one computer network to another network is
known as switching.

Why is Switching Concept required?

Switching concept is developed because of the following reasons:

 Bandwidth: The maximum transfer rate of a cable. It’s a very critical and expensive
resource. Therefore, switching techniques are used for the effective utilization of the
bandwidth of a network.

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 Collision: The effect that occurs when more than one device transmits the message
over the same physical media, and they collide with each other. To overcome this
problem, switching technology is implemented so that packets do not collide with each
other.

Advantages of Switching:

 Increases the bandwidth of the network.

 It reduces the workload on individual PCs as it sends the information to only that device
which has been addressed.
 It increases the overall performance of the network by reducing the traffic on the
network.
 There will be less frame collision as switch creates the collision domain for each
connection.

Disadvantages of Switching:

 It is more expensive than network bridges.

 A Switch cannot determine the network connectivity issues easily.
 Proper designing and configuration of the switch are required to handle multicast
packets.

There are three types of switching modes:

Store-and-forward

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• A technique in which the intermediate nodes store the received frame and then
check for errors before forwarding the packets to the next node.
• Storing the frame: The layer 2 switch waits until the entire frame has
received. On receiving the entire frame, switch store the frame into the switch
buffer memory.
• Forwarding the frame: When the frame is stored, then the frame is checked
for the errors. If any error found, the message is discarded otherwise the message
is forwarded to the next node.
• This technique ensures a high level of security as the destination network will not
be affected by the corrupted frames.
• Store-and-forward switches are highly reliable as it does not forward the collided
frames.

Cut-through Switching

 A technique in which the switch forwards the packets after the destination
address has been identified without waiting for the entire frame to be
received.

 Once the frame is received, it checks the first six bytes of the frame following
the preamble, the switch checks the destination in the switching table to
determine the outgoing interface port and forwards the frame to the
destination.

 It has low latency rate as the switch does not wait for the entire frame to be
received before sending the packets to the destination.

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 It has no error checking technique. Therefore, the errors can be sent with or
without errors to the receiver.

 A Cut-through switching technique has low wait time as it forwards the

packets as soon as it identifies the destination MAC address.

Fragment-free Switching

 An advanced technique of the Cut-through Switching.

 A technique that reads at least 64 bytes of a frame before forwarding to the next node to
provide the error-free transmission.

 It combines the speed of Cut-through Switching with the error checking functionality.

 This technique checks the 64 bytes of the ethernet frame where addressing information is
available.

 A collision is detected within 64 bytes of the frame, the frames which are collided will not
be forwarded further.

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Types of Switching:

 Message Switching: An older switching technique that has become obsolete. The
entire data block/message is forwarded across the entire network thus, making it highly
inefficient.

 Circuit Switching: A connection is established between the source and destination

beforehand. This connection receives the complete bandwidth of the network until the
data is transferred completely.
o It’s better than message switching as it does not involve sending data to the entire
network, instead of its destination only.

 Packet Switching: This technique requires the data to be broken down into smaller
components, data frames, or packets. These data frames are then transferred to their
destinations according to the available resources in the network at a particular time.
This switching type is used in modern computers and even the Internet. Here, each
data frame contains additional information about the destination and other information
required for proper transfer through network components.

• Datagram Packet Switching: Each data frame is taken as an individual entity and thus,
they are processed separately. No connection is established before data transmission occurs.
Although this approach provides flexibility in data transfer, it may cause a loss of data frames
or late delivery of the data frames.
• Virtual-Circuit Packet Switching: A logical connection between the source and
destination is made before transmitting any data. These logical connections are called virtual
circuits. Each data frame follows these logical paths and provides a reliable way of
transmitting data with less chance of data loss.

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