Chapter 3

Data and Signals

3.1 Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
 3-3 DIGITAL SIGNALS
In addition to being represented by an analog signal,
information can also be represented by a digital signal.
For example, a 1 can be encoded as a positive voltage
and a 0 as zero voltage. A digital signal can have more
than two levels. In this case, we can send more than 1 bit
for each level.

Topics discussed in this section:

Bit Rate
Bit Length
Digital Signal as a Composite Analog Signal
Application Layer
3.2
 Transmission of Digital
Signals
 How can we send a digital signal from
point A to point B? We can transmit a
digital signal by using one of two
different approaches:
 baseband transmission
 broadband transmission

3.3
 Baseband Transmission

 Baseband transmission means sending a

digital signal over a channel without
changing the digital signal to an analog
signal.

3.4
 Figure 3.18 Baseband transmission

3.5
 Broadband Transmission

 Broadband transmission or modulation

means changing the digital signal to an
analog signal for transmission.

3.6
 Figure 3.24 Modulation of a digital signal for transmission on a bandpass
channel

3.7
 3-4 TRANSMISSION IMPAIRMENT

Signals travel through transmission media, which are not

perfect. The imperfection causes signal impairment. This
means that the signal at the beginning of the medium is
not the same as the signal at the end of the medium.
What is sent is not what is received. Three causes of
impairment are attenuation, distortion, and noise.

Topics discussed in this section:

Attenuation
Distortion
Noise

3.8
 Figure 3.25 Causes of impairment

3.9
 Attenuation
 Attenuation means a loss of energy. When a signal, simple or
composite, travels through a medium, it loses some of its energy in
overcoming the resistance of the medium.
 That is why a wire carrying electric signals gets warm, if not hot, after a
while. Some of the electrical energy in the signal is converted to heat.
To compensate for this loss, amplifiers are used to amplify the signal.
Figure shows the effect of attenuation and amplification.

3.10
 Figure 3.26 Attenuation

3.11
 Decibel
 It show that a signal has lost or gained strength, engineers use
the unit of the decibel.
 The decibel (dB) measures the relative strengths of two signals
or one signal at two different points.
 Note that the decibel is negative if a signal is attenuated and
positive if a signal is amplified.

 Variables PI and P2 are the powers of a signal at points 1 and 2,

respectively

3.12
 Distortion
 Distortion means that the signal changes its form or shape. Distortion
can occur in a composite signal made of different frequencies.
 Each signal component has its own propagation speed through a
medium and, therefore, its own delay in arriving at the final destination.
 Differences in delay may create a difference in phase if the delay is not
exactly the same as the period duration.
 In other words, signal components at the receiver have phases different
from what they had at the sender. The shape of the composite signal is
therefore not the same. Figure shows the effect of distortion on a
composite signal.

3.13
 Figure 3.28 Distortion

3.14
 Noise
 Noise is another cause of impairment. Several types of noise, such as
thermal noise, induced noise, crosstalk, and impulse noise, may corrupt
the signal.
 Thermal noise is the random motion of electrons in a wire which creates
an extra signal not originally sent by the transmitter.
 Induced noise comes from sources such as motors and appliances.
These devices act as a sending antenna, and the transmission medium
acts as the receiving antenna.
 Crosstalk is the effect of one wire on the other. One wire acts as a
sending antenna and the other as the receiving antenna.
 Impulse noise is a spike (a signal with high energy in a very short time)
that comes from power lines, lightning, and so on. Figure shows the
effect of noise on a signal.

3.15
 Figure 3.29 Noise

3.16
 Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR)
 to find the theoretical bit rate limit, we need to know the ratio of the
signal power to the noise power. The signal-to-noise ratio is defined as
SNR=average signal power/average noise power
 We need to consider the average signal power and the average noise
power because these may change with time.
 SNR is actually the ratio of what is wanted (signal) to what is not
wanted (noise).
 A high SNR means the signal is less corrupted by noise; a low SNR
means the signal is more corrupted by noise.

3.17
 3-5 DATA RATE LIMITS

A very important consideration in data communications

is how fast we can send data, in bits per second, over a
channel. Data rate depends on three factors:
1. The bandwidth available
2. The level of the signals we use
3. The quality of the channel (the level of noise)

Topics discussed in this section:

Noiseless Channel: Nyquist Bit Rate
Noisy Channel: Shannon Capacity
Using Both Limits

3.18
 Noiseless Channel: Nyquist Bit
Rate
 For a noiseless channel, the Nyquist bit rate formula defines the theoretical
maximum bit rate
Bit Rate = 2 x bandwidth x 10g2 L
 In this formula, bandwidth is the bandwidth of the channel, L is the number
of signal levels used to represent data, and Bit Rate is the bit rate in bits per
second.
 According to the formula, we might think that, given a specific bandwidth,
we can have any bit rate we want by increasing the number of signal leve1s.
 Although the idea is theoretically correct, practically there is a limit. When we
increase the number of signal levels, we impose a burden on the receiver. If
the number of levels in a signal is just 2, the receiver can easily distinguish
between a 0 and a 1. If the level of a signal is 64, the receiver must be very
sophisticated to distinguish between 64 different levels. In other words,
increasing the levels of a signal reduces the reliability of the system.

3.19
 Noisy Channel: Shannon
Capacity
 In reality, we cannot have a noiseless channel; the channel is always
noisy.
 In 1944, Claude Shannon introduced a formula, called the Shannon
capacity, to determine the theoretical highest data rate for a noisy
channel: Capacity =bandwidth X log2 (1 +SNR)
 In this formula, bandwidth is the bandwidth of the channel, SNR is the
signal-to noise ratio, and capacity is the capacity of the channel in bits
per second.
 Note that in the Shannon formula there is no indication of the signal
level, which means that no matter how many levels we have, we cannot
achieve a data rate higher than the capacity of the channel. In other
words, the formula defines a characteristic of the channel, not the
method of transmission.

3.20
 3-6 PERFORMANCE

One important issue in networking is the performance of

the network—how good is it? We discuss quality of
service, an overall measurement of network performance,
in greater detail in Chapter 24. In this section, we
introduce terms that we need for future chapters.

Topics discussed in this section:

Bandwidth
Throughput
Latency (Delay)
Bandwidth-Delay Product
3.21
 PERFORMANCE

Bandwidth
One characteristic that measures network performance is bandwidth.

However, the term can be used in two different contexts with two different
measuring values:
bandwidth in hertz and bandwidth in bits per second.

Bandwidth in Hertz
Bandwidth in hertz is the range of frequencies contained in a composite

signal or the range of frequencies a channel can pass. For example, we can
say the bandwidth of a subscriber telephone line is 4 kHz.
Bandwidth in Bits per Seconds
The term bandwidth can also refer to the number of bits per second that a

channel, a link, or even a network can transmit. For example, one can say
the bandwidth of a Fast Ethernet network (or the links in this network) is a
maximum of 100 Mbps. This means that this network can send 100 Mbps.

3.22
 Note
In networking, we use the term
bandwidth in two contexts.
❏ The first, bandwidth in hertz, refers to
the range of frequencies in a
composite signal or the range of
frequencies that a channel can pass.

❏ The second, bandwidth in bits per

second, refers to the speed of bit
transmission in a channel or link.
3.23
 Throughput
 The throughput is a measure of how fast we can actually send data
through a network.
 A link may have a bandwidth of B bps, but we can only send T bps
through this link with T always less than B. In other words, the
bandwidth is a potential measurement of a link; the throughput is an
actual measurement of how fast we can send data.
 For example, we may have a link with a bandwidth of 1 Mbps, but the
devices connected to the end of the link may handle only 200 kbps. This
means that we cannot send more than 200 kbps through this link.
 Imagine a highway designed to transmit 1000 cars per minute from one
point to another. However, if there is congestion on the road, this figure
may be reduced to 100 cars per minute. The bandwidth is 1000 cars per
minute; the throughput is 100 cars per minute.

3.24
 Latency (Delay)
 The latency or delay defines how long it takes for an entire message to
completely arrive at the destination from the time the first bit is sent out
from the source.
 We can say that latency is made of four components: propagation time,
transmission time, queuing time and processing delay.
Latency =propagation time +transmission time +queuing time + processing delay

3.25
 Propagation Time
 Propagation time measures the time required for a bit to travel from the
source to the destination. The propagation time is calculated by dividing
the distance by the propagation speed.
Propagation time = Distance/Propagation speed
 The propagation speed of electromagnetic signals depends on the
medium and on the frequency of the signal.

3.26
 Transmission time
 In data communications we don't send just 1 bit, we send a message.
The first bit may take a time equal to the propagation time to reach its
destination; the last bit also may take the same amount of time.
 However, there is a time between the first bit leaving the sender and
the last bit arriving at the receiver. The first bit leaves earlier and arrives
earlier; the last bit leaves later and arrives later. The time required for
transmission of a message depends on the size of the message and the
bandwidth of the channel.

Transmission time =Message size/Bandwidth

3.27
  The third component in latency is the queuing time, the time needed for
each intermediate or end device to hold the message before it can be
processed.
 The queuing time is not a fixed factor; it changes with the load imposed
on the network. When there is heavy traffic on the network, the queuing
time increases. An intermediate device, such as a router, queues the
arrived messages and processes them one by one. If there are many
messages, each message will have to wait.

3.28
 Jitter
 Another performance issue that is related to delay is jitter. We can
roughly say that jitter is a problem if different packets of data encounter
different delays and the application using the data at the receiver site is
time-sensitive (audio and video data, for example).
 If the delay for the first packet is 20 ms, for the second is 45 ms, and
for the third is 40 ms, then the real-time application that uses the
packets endures jitter.

3.29