DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS
PCM - LINE CODING
Prepared by : Eng. Mohammad Al-Nairat
Line coding
Digital data ( a sequence of binary digits) can be transmitted by various pulse waveforms which
are sometimes called line codes.
Line coding
The reason for the large selection relates to the differences in performance that characterize each
waveform.
Choosing a PCM for a particular application depends on the following parameters:
1) DC component:
Quantization
Let the amplitude range of the continuous signal be partitioned into L intervals, where the
interval, denoted by , is determined by the decision levels (also called the threshold levels) and :
The spacing between two adjacent decision levels is called the step-size.
If the step-size is the same for each interval, then the quantizer is called a uniform quantizer,
otherwise the quantizer is nonuniform.
Uniform Quantization
The input–output characteristic of the quantizer (or quantizer characteristic) is a staircase
function.
Uniform Quantization
Uniform Quantization
The classification whether a characteristic is midtread or midrise depends on whether the origin
lies in the middle of a tread, or a rise of the staircase characteristic.
For both characteristics, the decision levels are equally spaced and the target level is the midpoint
of the interval:
The quantization process always introduces an error and the performance of a quantizer is usually
evaluated in terms of its SNR.
Uniform Quantization
Typically, the input of the quantizer can be modeled as a zero-mean RV with some PDF .
Furthermore, assume that the amplitude range of is , that the uniform quantizer is of midrise
type, and that the number of quantization levels is .
Then the quantization step-size is given by:
Uniform Quantization
Uniform Quantization
Uniform Quantization
Uniform Quantization
Let be the error introduced by the quantizer, then .
If the step-size is sufficiently small (i.e., the number of quantization intervals is sufficiently
large), then it is reasonable to assume that the quantization error is a uniform random variable
over the range .
The PDF of the random variable is given by:
Uniform Quantization
Uniform Quantization
The mean of the quantization error is zero.
Its variance can be calculated as follows:
The number of quantization levels is usually chosen to be a power of , i.e. , where is the number
of bits needed to represent each target level.
The expression for the variance of the quantization error:
Uniform Quantization
Since the message sample is a zero-mean RV whose PDF is , the average power of the message is
equal to the variance of m, i.e.,
Therefore, the SNRq can be expressed as:
Non-uniform Quantization
As the distribution of the message signal is close to uniform, the uniform quantizer works well.
However, for certain signals such as voice, the input distribution is far from uniform.
For a voice signal, in particular, there exists a higher probability for smaller amplitudes
(corresponding to silent periods and soft speech) and a lower probability for larger amplitudes
(corresponding to loud speech).
Therefore it is more efficient to design a quantizer with more quantization regions at lower
amplitudes and less quantization regions at larger amplitudes to overcome the variations in power
levels that the quantizer sees at its input.
Non-uniform Quantization
The resulting quantizer would be, in essence, a nonuniform quantizer having quantization regions
of various sizes.
Non-uniform Quantization
The usual and robust method for performing nonuniform quantization is:
1) Pass the continuous samples through a monotonic nonlinearity called a compressor that
compresses the large amplitudes (which essentially reduces the dynamic range of the signal)
then the compressed signal is applied to a uniform quantizer.
2) At the receiving end, the inverse of compression is carried out by the expander to obtain the
sampled values.
The combination of a compressor and an expander is called a compander.
Non-uniform Quantization
Non-uniform Quantization
Non-uniform Quantization
PCM Bandwidth
PCM Bandwidth
PCM Bandwidth
PCM Bandwidth
