Data and Computer

Communications

Tenth Edition
by William Stallings

Data and Computer Communications, Tenth

Edition by William Stallings, (c) Pearson
Education, 2013
 CHAPTER 5

Signal Encoding Techniques

“Thus one says, in general, that the function of the
transmitter is to encode, and that of the receiver to
decode, the message. The theory provides for very
sophisticated transmitters and receivers—such, for
example, as possess ‘memories,’ so that the way they
encode a certain symbol of the message depends not
only upon this one symbol but also upon previous
symbols of the message and the way they have been
encoded.”

—The Mathematics of Communication,

Scientific American, July 1949,
Warren Weaver
 Digital Data, Digital Signal
 Digital signal

Sequence of discrete, discontinuous voltage
pulses

Each pulse is a signal element

Binary data are transmitted by encoding each
data bit into signal elements
 Terminology
 Unipolar – all signal elements have the same sign
 Polar – one logic state represented by positive
voltage and the other by negative voltage
 Data rate – rate, in bits per second that data are
transmitted
 Duration or length of a bit – time taken for
transmitter to emit the bit
 Modulation rate – rate at which the signal level is
changed; the rate is expressed in baud, which
means signal elements per second
 Mark and space – refer to the binary digits 1 and 0
 Table 5.1
Key Data Transmission Terms
 Interpreting Signals
Tasks involved in interpreting digital signal at the receiver:
Factors affecting signal interpretation:

Timing of bits - when they start and end

Signal to noise ratio

Signal levels

Data rate

Bandwidth
Table 5.2

Definition
of Digital
Signal
Encoding
Formats

(This table can be found on

page 177 in the textbook)
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 Nonreturn to Zero

 Easiest way to transmit digital signals is to

use two different voltages for 0 and 1 bits
 Voltage level is constant during a bit interval

No transition (no return to a zero voltage level)

Absence of voltage for 0, constant positive
voltage for 1

More often, a negative voltage represents one
value and a positive voltage represents the
other (NRZ-L)
 Non-return to Zero Inverted
(NRZI)
 Non-return to zero, invert on ones
 Maintains a constant voltage pulse for duration
of a bit time
 Data are encoded as presence or absence of
signal transition at the beginning of the bit time

Transition (low to high, high to low) denotes binary 1

No transition denotes binary 0
Is an example of differential encoding
• Data are represented by changes rather than levels
• More reliable to detect a transition in the presence of
noise than to compare a value to a threshold
• Easy to lose sense of polarity
 Multilevel Binary
Bipolar-AMI
 Use more than two signal levels
 Bipolar-AMI

Binary 0 represented by no line signal

Binary 1 represented by positive or
negative pulse

Binary 1 pulses alternate in polarity

No loss of sync if a long string of 1s occurs

No net dc component

Lower bandwidth

Easy error detection
 Multilevel Binary
Pseudoternary
 Binary 1 represented by absence of line
signal
 Binary 0 represented by alternating
positive and negative pulses
 No advantage or disadvantage over
bipolar-AMI and each is the basis of some
applications
 Multilevel Binary Issues
 Synchronization with long runs of 0’s or 1’s

Can insert additional bits that force transitions

Scramble data
 Not as efficient as NRZ

Each signal element only represents one bit
• Receiver distinguishes between three levels: +A, -A, 0
 A 3 level system could represent log23 = 1.58 bits

Requires approximately 3dB more signal power for
same probability of bit error
 Manchester Encoding

 There is a transition at the middle of each bit

period
 Midbit transition serves as a clocking
mechanism and also as data
 Low to high transition represents a 1
 High to low transition represents a 0
 Differential Manchester
Encoding

 Midbittransition is only used for clocking

 The encoding of a 0 is represented by the
presence of a transition at the beginning of a bit
period
 A 1 is represented by the absence of a transition
at the beginning of a bit period
 Has the added advantage of employing
differential encoding
Biphase Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
• Synchronization • At least one transition
• No dc component per bit time and may
• Has error detection have two
• Maximum modulation
rate is twice NRZ
• Requires more
bandwidth
 Table 5.3
Normalized Signal Transition Rate of
Various Digital Signal Encoding
Schemes
 Scrambling Design Goals

component
 Use scrambling to replace
Have no dc

sequences that would

produce constant voltage
level line signals
 These filling sequences sequences of zero
Have no long
must:

Provide sufficient transitions
for the receiver’s clock to
maintain synchronization in data rate
Have no reduction

Be recognized by the
receiver and replaced with
the original data sequence

Be the same length as the capability

original sequence so there is

Error detection

no data rate penalty

 B8ZS
 Bipolarwith 8-zeros substitution
 Coding scheme commonly used in North
America
 Based on a bipolar-AMI

Amended with the following rules:
• If an octet of all zeros occurs and the last voltage
pulse preceding this octet was positive, then the
eight zeros of the octet are encoded as 000+-0-+
• If an octet of all zeros occurs and the last voltage
pulse preceding this octet was negative, then the
eight zeros of the octet are encoded as 000-+0+-
 Table 5.4
HDB3 Substitution Rules
 Digital Data, Analog Signal
 Main use is public telephone system

Was designed to receive, switch, and transmit
analog signals

Has a frequency range of 300Hz to 3400Hz

Is not at present suitable for handling digital signals
from the subscriber locations

Uses modem (modulator-demodulator) to convert
digital data to analog signals and vice versa
 Amplitude Shift Keying
(ASK)
 Encode 0/1 by different carrier amplitudes

Usually have one amplitude zero
 Susceptible to sudden gain changes
 Inefficient
 Used for:

Up to 1200bps on voice grade lines

Very high speeds over optical fiber
 Binary Frequency Shift
Keying (BFSK)
 Most common form of FSK
 Two binary values are represented by two
different frequencies (near carrier)
 Less susceptible to error than ASK
 Used for:

Up to 1200bps on voice grade lines

High frequency radio

Even higher frequency on LANs using coaxial cable
 Multiple FSK
(MFSK)

 Each signaling element represents more

than one bit
 More than two frequencies are used
 More bandwidth efficient
 More susceptible to error
 Phase Shift Keying
(PSK)
 The phase of the carrier signal is shifted to
represent data
 Binary PSK

Two phases represent the two binary digits
 Differential PSK

Phase shifted relative to previous transmission
rather than some reference signal
 Table 5.5
Bandwidth Efficiency (R/BT) for Various
Digital-to-Analog Encoding Schemes
 Performance of Digital to
Analog Modulation Schemes

In presence of
Bandwidth
noise
Bit error rate of
ASK/PSK
PSK and QPSK are
bandwidth directly
about 3dB superior
relates to bit rate
to ASK and FSK

MFSK and MPSK

Multilevel PSK have tradeoff
gives significant between bandwidth
improvements efficiency and error
performance
 Quadrature Amplitude
Modulation (QAM)
 QAM is used in the asymmetric digital subscriber
line (ADSL), in cable modems, and in some
wireless standards
 Is a combination of ASK and PSK
 Logical extension of QPSK
 Send two different signals simultaneously on the
same carrier frequency

Use two copies of carrier, one shifted 90 °

Each carrier is ASK modulated

Two independent signals simultaneously transmitted over
the same medium

At the receiver, the two signals are demodulated and the
results are combined to produce the original binary input
 Analog Data, Digital Signal
 Digitization is the  Analog to digital
conversion of analog conversion is done
data into digital data using a codec
which can then: 
Pulse code modulation

Be transmitted using 
Delta modulation
NRZ-L

Be transmitted using
code other than NRZ-L

Be converted to
analog signal
Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)
 Based on the sampling theorem:

“If a signal f(t) is sampled at regular intervals of time
and at a rate higher than twice the highest
signal frequency, then the samples contain all
the information of the original signal. The
function f(t) may be reconstructed from these
samples by the use of a lowpass filter.”
 Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM)

Analog samples

To convert to digital, each of these analog
samples must be assigned a binary code
Non-Linear Coding
 Delta Modulation (DM)
 Analog input is approximated by a staircase
function

Can move up or down one quantization level () at
each sampling interval
 Has binary behavior

Function only moves up or down at each sampling
interval

Output of the delta modulation process can be
represented as a single binary digit for each sample

1 is generated if the staircase function is to go up
during the next interval, otherwise a 0 is generated
 Summary
 Digital data, digital  Digital data, analog
signals signals

Nonreturn to zero (NRZ) 
Amplitude shift keying

Multilevel binary 
Frequency shift keying

Biphase 
Phase shift keying

Modulation rate 
Performance

Scrambling techniques 
Quadrature amplitude
 Analog data, digital modulation
signals

Pulse code modulation

Delta modulation (DM)

Performance