Unit 1 – Introduction ------2 Hrs

1.1. Evolution of Data Communication Systems

1.2. Analog and Digital Data Transmission, Data Communication Terminology
1.3. Standards Organizations, Applications
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DATA & INFORMATION

Data refers to the raw facts that are collected while information
refers to processed data that enables us to take decisions.
Ex. When result of a particular test is declared it contains dataof all
students, when you find the marks you have scored you have the
information that lets you know whether you have passed or failed.
The word data refers to any information which is presented in a form
that is agreed and accepted upon by is creators and users.

DATA COMMUNICATION

Data Communication is a process of exchanging data or information

In case of computer networks this exchange is done between two devices
over a transmission medium.
This process involves a communication system which is made up of
hardware and software. The hardware part involves the sender and
receiver devices and the intermediate devices through which the data
passes. The software part involves certain rules which specify what is
to be communicated, how itis to be communicated and when. It is also
called as a Protocol.
Characteristics of Data Communication

The effectiveness of any data communications system dependsupon the

following four fundamental characteristics:
1. Delivery: The data should be delivered to the correct destination and
correct user.
2. Accuracy: The communication system should deliver the data
accurately, without introducing any errors. The data may get corrupted
during transmission affecting the accuracy of the delivered data.
3. Timeliness: Audio and Video data has to be delivered in a timely
manner without any delay; such a data delivery is called real time
transmission of data.
4. Jitter: It is the variation in the packet arrival time. Uneven Jitter may
affect the timeliness of data being transmitted.
Components of Data Communication

A Data Communication system has five components as shown in the

diagram below:

Fig. Components of a Data Communication System

1. Message
• Message is the information to be communicated by the sender
tothe receiver.

2. Sender
• The sender is any device that is capable of sending the data
(message).

3. Receiver
• The receiver is a device that the sender wants to communicate
thedata (message).

4. Transmission Medium
• It is the path by which the message travels from sender to
receiver.
• It can be wired or wireless and many subtypes in both.
5. Protocol
• It is an agreed upon set or rules used by the sender and receiver
to communicate data.
• A protocol is a set of rules that governs data communication.
• A Protocol is a necessity in data communications without which
the communicating entities are like two persons trying to talk to
each other in a different language without know the other
language.
DATA REPRESENTATION

Data is collection of raw facts which is processed to deduce

information.

There may be different forms in which data may be represented. Some

of the forms of data used in communications are as follows:

1. Text
Text includes combination of alphabets in small case as wellas
upper case.
It is stored as a pattern of bits. Prevalent encoding system :
ASCII, Unicode

2. Numbers
• Numbers include combination of digits from 0 to 9.
• It is stored as a pattern of bits. Prevalent encoding system: ASCII, Unicode
3. Images
• An image is worth a thousand words‖ is a very famous saying.
• In computers images are digitally stored.
• A Pixel is the smallest element of an image. To put it in simple terms, a picture or
image is a matrix of pixel elements.

4. Audio
Data can also be in the form of sound which can be recorded and
broadcasted. Example: What we hear on the radio is a source of
data or information.
Audio data is continuous, not discrete.

5. Video
Video refers to broadcasting of data in form of picture or movie
 DATA FLOW (Modes of Communication)

Two devices communicate with each other by sending and receiving

data. The data can flow between the two devices in the following ways.
1. Simplex
2. Half Duplex
3. Full Duplex

Simplex

Figure: Simplex mode of communication

In Simplex, communication is unidirectional

Only one of the devices sends the data and the other oneonly
receives the data.
Example: in the above diagram: a CPU send data while a
monitor only receives data.

Half Duplex

Figure: Half Duplex Mode of Communication

In half duplex both the stations can transmit as well as receivebut not
at the same time.
When one device is sending other can only receive and vice-versa
(as shown in figure above.)
Example: A walkie-talkie.
 Full Duplex

Figure: Full Duplex Mode of Communication

In Full duplex mode, both stations can transmit and receiveat

the same time.
Example: mobile phones

Evolution of Data Communication system (History of Data

Communication)
1838: Samuel Morse & Alfred Veil Invent Morse Code Telegraph System
1876: Alexander Graham Bell invented Telephone
1910: Howard Krum developed Start/Stop Synchronizations
1930: Development of ASCII Transmission Code
1945: Allied Governments develop the First Large Computer
1950: IBM releases its first computer IBM 710
1960: IBM releases the First Commercial Computer IBM 360

Table: Time Line of Data Networking Architectures

Time Architecture
1970s Standalone mainframes
Early 1980s Networked mainframes
Early 1980s Standalone workstations
Early to late 1980s Local area networking
Mid-1980s to mid-1990s LAN internetworking
Mid-1990s Internet commercialization
Mid- to late 1990s Application-driven networks
Late 1990s Remote-access workers
Early 2000s Home area networking
Mid-2000s Personal area networks and the Internet as corporate backbone
Analog and digital data transmission
Analog signals
• Analog signals are continuous time-varying signals.
• It means that these signals are the function of time.

Or

• An Analog signal is a signal whose characteristics, such as voltage, amplitude, or

frequency, vary with time.
• The common shape of an analog signal is the sinusoidal wave. It is shown below:

Examples of analog signals are electrical signals, light signals, speech signals, etc. Radio signals
are also categorized as analog signals.

Every signal requires a medium to propagation.

For example,

• Electrical signals require cables to propagate from one place to another.

• Speech signals or voice requires free space to propagate.
• We can also say that speech signal uses air as a propagation medium. But, noise and
distortion in analog signals during transmission are greater than digital signals.

Types of analog signals

Periodic signals

• An analog signal that repeats over a period of time is known as the periodic signal, such
as sine wave and cosine wave.
• The cosine wave is shown below:

Aperiodic signals

• An analog signal that does not repeat over a period of time is known as an Aperiodic
signal, such as noise signals.

An example of the aperiodic analog signal is shown below:

Digital Signal

• Digital signals are the signal that represents the data in the form of discrete values.
• It takes only two values 0 and 1, which is known as bits. The data is transmitted in the
form of these bits.
• For example,

01000110

It is an 8-bit or 1 byte data.

A common example of the digital signal is shown below:

Example:

• The average marks of the 30 students in a classroom in five subjects can be considered
as an example of a digital signal.
• The graph is shown below:

Types of Digital Signals

Digital signals are also categorized as periodic signals and non-periodic signals.
Periodic signals

• A digital signal that repeats over a period of time is known as periodic signals, such as
square wave.
• The square wave is shown below:

Aperiodic signals

• A digital signal that does not repeat over a period of time is known as an Aperiodic
signal.
• It is also a discrete signal, but not of repeated pattern.
• A common example of the Aperiodic digital signal is shown below:
Difference Between Analog and Digital Signal.

Category Analog Digital Communication

Communication

Definition It uses analog signals for It uses digital signals for transmitting data from transmitter
transmitting data from to the receiver.
transmitter to the receiver.

Signal The analog signal is a Digital signal uses two bits for transmission of level 0
continuous time varying (LOW) and 1 (HIGH).
signal.

Noise Poor Good

Immunity

Error High Low

Probability

Flexible Less flexible More flexible

Cost Low cost High cost

Power High Low

consumption

Data Less accurate More accurate

transmission

Signal The analog signals are The digital signals are represented by a square wave.
representation represented by a sine wave or
cosine wave.

Examples Audio signals, speech signals, Clock signals

video signals, etc.

Applications Radar. Telephony, etc. Digital watches, Compact Disks, computers, etc.
Analog Communication System
• The analog communication system refers to a model that helps the data to transmit from
one end to the other. It combines elements that work together to establish a network
between the sender and receiver.
• It consists of transducers, transmitter, channel, and receiver.
• The function of transducers is to convert one form of energy to the other.
• The channel acts as a medium to transmit electrical information from the transmitter to the
receiver.

Analog communication System Block Diagram

OR

• The elements of basic analog communication system are input signal or information, input
transducer, transmitter, channel, Noise, Receiver, Output transducer.

1.Information or Input signal:

• The information is transmitted from one place to another.
• This information can be in the form of a sound signal like speech, or it can be in the form
of pictures or it can be in the form of data information.
2.Input transducer:
• The information in the form of sound, picture or data signals cannot be transmitted as it is.
• First it has to be converted into a suitable electrical signal.
• The input transducer block does this job.
• The input transducer commonly used are microphones, TV etc.
3.Transmitter:
• The function of the transmitter is to convert the electrical equivalent of the information to
a suitable form so that it can transfer over long distance.
• Basic block in transmitter are: Amplifier,Oscillator,Mixer.
4.Channel:
• The communication channel is the medium used for transmission of electrical signal from
one place to other.
• The communication medium can be conducting wires, cables, optical fibres or free space.
• Depending on the type of communication medium, two types of communication system
exists.
• Line communication: The line communication systems use the communication medium
like the simple wires or cables or optical fibres. Eg: Telephone, Cable TV.
• Radio communication: The radio communication systems use the free space as their
communication medium. The transmitted signal is in the form of electromagnetic waves.
E.g. Mobile communication, satellite communication.
5.Noise:
• Noise is an unwanted electrical signal which gets added to the transmitted signal when it
is travelling towards the receiver.
• Due to noise quality of information gets degrade.
• Once added the noise cannot be separated out from the information
6.Receiver:

• The receiver always converts the modulated signal into original signal which consist of
Amplifier, Oscillator, Mixer.

7.Output transducer:
• Output transducer converts electrical signal into the original form i.e. sound or TV pictures
etc.
• E.g. Loudspeaker, data and image convertor.
Digital Communication System
Elements of Digital Communication
The elements which form a digital communication system is represented by the following block
diagram for the ease of understanding.

Following are the sections of the digital communication system.

Source
• The source can be an analog signal.

• Example: A Sound signal

Input Transducer
• This is a transducer which takes a physical input and converts it to an electrical signal
(Example: microphone).

• This block also consists of an analog to digital converter where a digital signal is needed
for further processes. A digital signal is generally represented by a binary sequence.

Source Encoder

• The source encoder compresses the data into minimum number of bits.
• This process helps in effective utilization of the bandwidth.
• It removes the redundant bits unnecessary excess bits, i.e., zeroes
Channel Encoder
• The channel encoder, does the coding for error correction.
• During the transmission of the signal, due to the noise in the channel, the signal may get
altered and hence to avoid this, the channel encoder adds some redundant bits to the
transmitted data. These are the error correcting bits.
Digital Modulator
• The signal to be transmitted is modulated here by a carrier.
• The signal is also converted to analog from the digital sequence, in order to make it travel
through the channel or medium.
Channel
• The channel or a medium, allows the analog signal to transmit from the transmitter end to
the receiver end.
Digital Demodulator
• This is the first step at the receiver end.
• The received signal is demodulated as well as converted again from analog to digital.
The signal gets reconstructed here.
Channel Decoder
• The channel decoder, after detecting the sequence, does some error corrections.
• The distortions which might occur during the transmission, are corrected by adding some
redundant bits. This addition of bits helps in the complete recovery of the original signal.
Source Decoder
• The resultant signal is once again digitized by sampling and quantizing so that the pure
digital output is obtained without the loss of information. The source decoder recreates
the source output.
Output Transducer
• This is the last block which converts the signal into the original physical form, which
was at the input of the transmitter.
• It converts the electrical signal into physical output (Example: loud speaker).
Output Signal
• This is the output which is produced after the whole process.
• Example − The sound signal received.
• This unit has dealt with the introduction, the digitization of signals, the advantages and the
elements of digital communications.
Digital Transmission

• Data can be represented either in analog or digital form.

• The computers used the digital form to store the information.
• Therefore, the data needs to be converted in digital form so that it can be used by a
computer.

Digital-to-Digital Conversion
How to convert digital data into digital signals?
It can be done in two ways, line coding and block coding. For all communications, line coding
is necessary whereas block coding is optional.

Line Coding
• The process for converting digital data into digital signal is said to be Line Coding.

• Digital data is found in binary format. It is represented (stored) internally as series of 1s

and 0s.

• Digital signal is denoted by discreet signal, which represents digital data.

• There are three types of line coding schemes available:
Uni-polar Encoding
• Unipolar encoding schemes use single voltage level to represent data.
• In this case, to represent binary 1, high voltage is transmitted and to represent 0, no voltage
is transmitted.
• It is also called Unipolar-Non-return-to-zero, because there is no rest condition i.e.
o it either represents 1 or 0.
Polar Encoding
• Polar encoding scheme uses multiple voltage levels to represent binary values.
• Polar encodings is available in four types:
• Polar Non-Return to Zero (Polar NRZ)

• It uses two different voltage levels to represent binary values. Generally, positive
voltage represents 1 and negative value represents 0.
• It is also NRZ because there is no rest condition.
• NRZ scheme has two variants: NRZ-L and NRZ-I.

NRZ-L changes voltage level at when a different bit is encountered whereas NRZ-I
changes voltage when a 1 is encountered.
Return to Zero (RZ)

• Problem with NRZ is that the receiver cannot conclude when a bit ended and when
the next bit is started, in case when sender and receiver’s clock are not synchronized.

• RZ uses three voltage levels, positive voltage to represent 1, negative voltage to

represent 0 and zero voltage for none. Signals change during bits not between bits.

Manchester

• This encoding scheme is a combination of RZ and NRZ-L. Bit time is divided into
two halves. It transits in the middle of the bit and changes phase when a different
bit is encountered.

Differential Manchester

• This encoding scheme is a combination of RZ and NRZ-I. It also transit at the

middle of the bit but changes phase only when 1 is encountered.

Bipolar Encoding
• Bipolar encoding uses three voltage levels, positive, negative and zero. Zero voltage
represents binary 0 and bit 1 is represented by altering positive and negative
voltages.
Data communication terminologies

Data Channel:

• Channel simply means a path to carry or flow.

• Data channel means the flow of data or to carry the data from one device to
another.
• In other words, we can say the data channel is a computer path or medium used
to transfer the data from sender to receiver.
• There are some data channel protocols:
• SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol) – Flow and Congestion
Control
• DTLS (Datagram Transport Layer Security) – Provides Security
• UDP (User Datagram Protocol) / IP (Internet Protocol) – Connectionless
communication protocol, NAT (Network address translational) traversal
Baud:

• It’s actually a common measurement unit of data transfer.

• Baud rate measures the rate at which the data is transferred from the sender to
the receiver in the data channel.
• It can be expressed in terms of bps (bits per second).
• It simply determines the speed of data transfer.
Bits Per Second (bps):

• Its symbol is “bit/s”.

• It can be present in two forms i.e. bps (bits per second) and Bps (Bytes per second).
• It’s also a measurement unit of speed at which the data is transferred.
• Some other forms are also present as shown in the table below:

S.No. Rate Denoted By Full Form

1 Rate of thousand bits per second Kbps Kilobits per second
2 Rate of thousand bytes per second KBps Kilobytes per second
3 Rate of million bits per second Mbps Megabits per second
4 Rate of Million bytes per second MBps Megabytes per second

Bandwidth (B/W):

• It’s the range of frequencies over which a communication system works.

• It’s the difference between the highest and the lowest frequencies of a data
channel.
• It generally measures the amount of data that can be transferred in a given amount
of time over a data channel.

S.No. Type of the Signal Range of Frequency in Hertz Bandwidth in Hertz

1 Voice signal 300-3400 3, 100
2 TV signal 0-5 MHz 5 MHz
3 Digital Data 300-3400 3, 100
4 Music Signal 20-15000 14, 980

DTR (Data Transfer Rates):

• It determines the rate of speed at which the data is transferred from one point to
another.
• Its measurement unit is bits per second (bps), Bytes per second (Bps), or baud.
• In computer, data transfer is mainly measured in Bytes per second.
• Data transfer between devices such as Hard disk and CD-ROM is usually
measured in milliseconds.
Concept of Standard

• Standards provide guidelines to product manufacturers and vendors to

ensure national and international interconnectivity.
• Data communications standards are classified into two categories:
1. De facto Standard
• These are the standards that have been traditionally
used and mean by fact or by convention
• These standards are not approved by any organized
body but are adopted by widespread use.
2. De jure standard
• It means by law or by regulation.
• These standards are legislated and approved by a body
that is officially recognized.

Standard Organizations in field of Networking

• Standards are created by standards creation committees, forums, and
government regulatory agencies.
• Examples of Standard Creation Committees:
1. International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
2. International Telecommunications Union
Telecommunications Standard (ITU-T)
3. American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
4. Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers(IEEE)
5. Electronic Industries Associates (EIA)

Examples of Forums
1. ATM Forum (Asynchronous Transfer Mode)
2. MPLS Forum (Multiprotocol Label Switching)
3. Frame Relay Forum

Examples of Regulatory Agencies:

• Federal Communications Committee (FCC)
Applications of Data Communication
Computer systems and peripherals are connected to form a network.
They provide numerous advantages:

• Resource sharing such as printers and storage devices

• Exchange of information by means of e-Mails and FTP
• Information sharing by using Web or Internet
• Interaction with other users using dynamic web pages
• IP phones
• Video conferences
• Parallel computing
• Instant messaging

Application of Analog communication system

• Analog communication plays a very vital role in the form of AM, FM or PM.
• It is used in audio, video, telephony, wireless communication, radar, emergency services,
etc.