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EE322
Analog and Digital Communication

Dr. Imran Javed

(Lecture-1)

Department of Electrical Engineering,

UET Lahore
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Course Goal
• To learn the concepts to transfer information from
source point to destination point accurately and
efficiently

• How can we define the accuracy and efficiency of

communication system?

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Performance Indicators for Quality of Communication

❑ The performance of a communication system can be measured in many ways:

1. ෝ 𝐭 to the original signal m(t)

How close is the estimate 𝐦
o This gives the accuracy of communication
o Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) is a measure of accuracy for analog m(t)
o Bit Error Rate (BER) is a measure of accuracy for digital m(t)

2. How much power is required to transmit m(t)?

o Lower power means longer battery life, less interference to others

3. How much information is transmitted per second (called as throughput) ?

o In analog systems, information rate is proportional to bandwidth B of
m(t).
o In digital systems, information rate is expressed in bits/sec.

4. How much bandwidth B is required to transmit m(t)?

o Larger B means more information can be transmitted per second
o Less B means more users can share the channel
• Exception: In Spread Spectrum, users share the same B.

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Textbook

• Fundamentals of Communication Systems by

John G. Proakis and Masoud Salehi, 2nd
Edition, Prentice Hall, 2013.

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Basic Elements of a Communication System

• Any communication system consists of three basic parts:
the transmitter, the channel, and the receiver.

Transmitter

Channel

Receiver

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Basic Elements of a Communication System

(cont’d)
• Transmitter
– Transforms the information into a suitable form to
send it from source to destination
• Channel
– A bridge or medium between transmitter and
receiver; can be wired or wireless
• Receiver
– Receives the noisy waveform from channel and
recovers the original data
– Receiver is designed according to the transmitter
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Examples of source, channel and destination

1. Radio transmitter – Air – Radio receiver

2. Digital TV data from satellite – Atmosphere –
Digital TV receiver
3. TV Remote control – Air – Infrared
sensor/receiver on TV
4. Modem - telephone line – Modem
5. Microphone – Twisted pair wire – Speaker
6. Computer – Ethernet cable – Computer

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Simplex, Half duplex and Full duplex Communication

• Simplex
– One way communication
– One person talks, others listen e.g., FM radio, Satellite TV
• Half Duplex
– Two-way communication but in one direction at a time
– Multiple people can talk but one at a time, e.g., Walkie-
talkie
• Full duplex
– Both way communication
– Two people can talk simultaneously e.g., GSM phone call,
WhatsApp voice call

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Analog and Digital Signals

• Analog signal
o Amplitude of signal varies over a continuous range i.e.,
contain infinite number of possible values
o Examples are temperature or pressure values over a certain
location, amplitude of speech or music waveform, etc.
• Digital Signal
o Amplitude of signal varies over a fixed range i.e., contain
finite number of possible values
o Examples are words in human speech, alphabets in a text
document, the output of computer keyboard
o Binary signal is a digital signal with only two possible
symbols or values
o A digital message constructed with M symbols is called M-ary
message (M=2 for binary signal)
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Analog and Digital Signals (cont’d)

Analog signal

Digital signal

Binary signal:
Have only two possible values
used to transmit bits 0 and 1.
Data rate is 1/T bits/sec.

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Analog Communication System

• An analog communication system transfers an analog signal
directly from source to destination

Noise
Information
Transmitter
Source and Input
(Modulator)
Transducer

Channel

Output Output Receiver

Signal Transducer (Demodulator)

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Analog Communication System (cont’d)

• Information Source: Generates the input data, e.g.,
voice, picture, text, video, etc.

• Input Transducer: Converts non-electrical data into

electrical form e.g., microphone, computer keyboard
o A microphone converts a speech signal into an
electrical signal; a video camera converts a picture into
an electrical signal.

• Output Transducer: At the destination, an output

transducer is required to convert the electrical signal back
into its original form e.g., speakers for acoustic signal

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Transmitter
• Transmitter modifies the input signal into a form that is suitable
for transmission through the physical channel
• In analog communication, core components of transmitter
include modulator and amplifier.
• For example, in radio and TV broadcast, the Federal
Communication Commission (PTA in Pakistan) specifies the
frequency range for each transmitting station
• Hence, each transmitting station must translate the information
signal into the appropriate frequency range allocated to it (this
is achieved through modulation)
• Thus, signals transmitted by multiple radio stations do not
interfere with one another.
• Therefore, modulation enables Frequency Division
Multiplexing (FDM) to simultaneously transmit data of
multiple users using different carrier signals.
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Transmitter (cont’d)

• Modulation is the process of systematically varying

either the amplitude, frequency, or phase of a
sinusoidal carrier based on the information signal.

• For example, in AM radio broadcast, the information

signal to be transmitted is contained in the amplitude
variations of the sinusoidal carrier, which is the center
frequency in the frequency band allocated to the radio
transmitting station.

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AM Transmission

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FM Transmission
• In FM radio broadcast, the information signal is
contained in the frequency variations of the sinusoidal
carrier.

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Receiver
• The function of receiver is to recover the message signal
from the received signal.
• The core functions of receiver include signal demodulation,
channel estimation and data equalization

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Receiver (cont’d)
• Demodulation extracts the message signal from the
modulated waveform.
• Channel estimation estimates the effect of the channel
using training or pilot symbols (also called as preamble)
• Data equalization uses the channel estimator to neutralize
the channel effects from the data signal

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Channel
• Channel is the electrical medium that bridges the distance between
source and destination e.g.,
– Twisted copper wires and optical fiber (for telephone & internet),
co-axial cable (for TV), radio waves (for wireless transmission)
• Typical degradations added by channel include attenuation, fading
(random fluctuations in signal amplitude), noise, signal dispersion and
interferences, etc.

• Distortion is the change or impairment in the waveform shape caused

by the channel (due to factors like multipath, pulse dispersion, phase
delay, frequency shift, etc.)
– Channel distortion can be corrected by Equalizers at the receiver
side
• Interference is the contamination by the signals from human sources
e.g., unwanted transmitters, jammers, out-of-band signal leakage by
other sources, etc.
– Interference can be removed by Filtering

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Noise
• Noise refers to random and unpredictable electrical
signals produced by natural processes e.g.,
– Thermal vibration of atoms in electronic circuitry of
communication hardware contribute to thermal noise
– Thermal (or black body) radiations emitted from the
earth, sun and other warm objects are picked up by
the communication hardware, and these contribute to
additive noise.

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Noise (cont’d)
• Thermal noise cannot be eliminated, this is one of
the fundamental system limitation
• The Central Limit Theorem from probability
theory states that the summation of many random
processes will tend to have Gaussian or Normal
distribution
• Therefore, thermal noise is modeled as Additive
White Gaussian Noise (AWGN)
– Additive: noise is superimposed on the transmitted signal
– White: noise power spectrum density is constant i.e., it
affects all frequencies
– Gaussian: distribution of noise amplitude is Gaussian
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Attenuation
• As the signal travels across the medium such as cable
or air, it loses energy
• This loss of energy is called as attenuation
• Signal attenuation increases with increase of the
distance between transmitter and receiver
• The attenuation of signal in air follows the Inverse
Square Law:-
– The power of transmitted signal at the receiver
reduces by a factor of 1Τ𝑟 2 , where ‘r’ is the
distance between transmitter and receiver.
– Therefore, received power:- 𝑃𝑅 = 𝑃𝑇 Τ𝑟 2
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Attenuation in wired medium

• Attenuation coefficient of optical fiber is

around 0.2 dB/KM at wavelength of 1550 nm

• Attenuation coefficient of coaxial cable is

around 18 dB/KM at 60MHz frequency

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Digital Transmission System

• In an analog communication system, the analog signals
are transmitted directly via carrier modulation, and the
received signal is demodulated to directly generate an
analog signal at the receiver.
• Alternately, an analog source signal may also be
converted into a digital form and the message can be
transmitted digitally.
• There are potential advantages to transmitting an
analog signal by means of digital transmission, for
example, improved signal quality, more noise immunity
and less cost.
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Digital Transmission System (cont’d)

Digital transmission makes possible the application of Digital Signal
Processing (DSP), that is the processing of the signals by computers.

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ADC
• An analog signal is converted to a digital signal by
means of an Analog to Digital Converter (ADC)
– Time axis is discretized by sampling the signal in the
time domain
• This process is called as sampling
– Then, the amplitude axis is discretized by partitioning
the amplitude of signal into a finite number of
intervals
• The process is called as quantization
– ADC performs both sampling and quantization

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Digital Transmission

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Sampling Theorem
• The sampling theorem states that if the highest
frequency in the signal spectrum is B then the
signal can be reconstructed from its samples if
samples are taken at a rate equal to or larger than
2B sample per second i.e.,
Sampling frequency 𝑓𝑠 ≥ 2B
Sampling time 𝑇𝑠 ≤ (1 / 2B)

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Basic Elements of Digital Communication System

Information
Source and Source Channel Digital
Input Encoder Encoder Modulator
Transducer

Channel

Output
Signal Source Channel Digital
Output
Transducer Decoder Decoder demodulator

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Source Encoding
• The process of efficiently converting the analog or a
digital source into a sequence of binary digits is called
source encoding or data compression.

Output of Sample and Hold

circuit in ADC
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Source Decoder
• The source decoder on the receiver side accepts the
output digital sequence from the channel decoder and,
from knowledge of the source encoding method, it
reconstructs the original analog or digital signal.

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Channel Encoder and Decoder

• Channel encoding on the transmit side adds additional
bits to the original payload to provide a means of
protecting the data against bit errors.
• The channel decoder on the receiver side utilizes the
redundant bits to remove the errors and recover the
original transmitted bits.

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Digital Modulator
• The digital modulator maps the digital data into signal
waveforms for transmission through the channel.

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Digital Demodulator
• At the receiving end of a digital communications
system, the digital demodulator processes the channel-
corrupted transmitted waveform and converts each
waveform to bits that represents an estimate of the
transmitted data symbol.

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Digital versus analog transmission

• Digital signals can be processed by digital circuit components,
which are cheap and can be produced on a single chip
• Digital signals are more immune to noise
• Distortionless repeaters can be employed in digital transmission
– Each repeater detects the received pulses, cleans it from noise
and then retransmits it to next repeater or network node
– Repeater operation in digital transmission does not
accumulate noise and it is regenerative
• Repeater operation in analog transmission is basically
amplification
– Does not eliminate or separate the noise completely
– Amplification enhances both signal and noise
– Analog repeater operation is not regenerative, noise is
accumulated at each stage
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Digital versus analog transmission (cont’d)

• Advantages of digital communications:

– Regenerative receiver

Original Regenerated
pulse pulse

Propagation distance

– Different kinds of digital signals are treated identically.

Voice
Data Bits
Media
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Electromagnetic Wave
• Transmitting the signal over-the-air requires
converting electrical signal into electromagnetic signal
• Antenna is the device used to convert electrical signal
into electromagnetic signal
• As the signal radiates from antenna, moving electric
and magnetic fields are generated at each point that
causes the signal to move towards destination
• For efficient radiation/reception, the length of
antenna should be at-least half the wavelength of
transmitted signal

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Radio Spectrum
• The radio spectrum is the part of the electromagnetic
spectrum with frequencies from 3 KHz to 300 GHz.
• Electromagnetic waves in this frequency range, called
radio waves, are widely used in radio, television,
mobile and satellite communication technologies
• Different parts of the radio spectrum are allocated by
International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for
different applications

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Signal and Channel Bandwidth

• A signal can be expressed as a sum of sinusoidal
components of various frequencies (Recall Fourier Series
and Fourier Transform)
• The plot of the amplitude versus frequency gives the
frequency spectrum
• In signal spectrum, the difference between the highest and
lowest frequencies of significant amplitudes is called signal
bandwidth, expressed in hertz
• The specific range of frequencies, that is allowed to pass by
the commiunication channel with reasonable reliability, is
called the channel bandwidth
• For a digital signal, channel bandwidth is the maximum data
rate supported by the channel
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Signal and Channel Bandwidth (cont’d)

• The channel bandwidth must match to the signal

bandwidth, otherwise, the signal will experience
attenuation, distorsion or loss of information
• Larger the channel bandwidth, larger is the data
rate i.e., more data bits can be transmitted per unit
time
• Increasing the frequency of signal increases the
signal bandwidth and causes more data to be sent
per unit time hence giving more data rate

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Channel Capacity in AWGN

• Cahnnel capacity is the maximum data rate at which the
data can pass through the channel, measured in bits/sec
• Two factors that limit the channel capacity
– Bandwidth (channel capacity is proportional to signal
bandwidth )
– Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) (Higher the SNR, more
signal levels can be used, therefore carrying more bits
with each pulse transmission)
• Shannon derived the following formula for channel
capacity of AWGN channel:
C = B × log2(1+SNR) bits/s
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Reading

• Chapter-1 John G. Proakis

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