Communication Systems
Communication Systems
Communication Systems
Reference Books :
1. An introduction to Analog & Digital Communication Systems by Simon Haykin
2. Principles of Electronic communication system by Frenzel
3. Digital communication by Sklar
Course Learning Outcome & Assessment
Methods
Assessment Methods:
Assignment: 10 Marks
CEP: 10 Marks
Mid-Term Exam: 20 Marks
Final Exam: 60
Introduction to Communication Systems
A communication system conveys information from its source to a destination some distance away.
All communication systems have the same basic function of information transfer, we’ll seek out and isolate the principles
and problems of conveying information in electrical form.
Communication Links: Systems
Message: The physical manifestation of information as produced by the source. Whatever form the message takes, the goal
of a communication system is to reproduce at the destination an acceptable replica of the source message.
Signals: A signal is a function which represents a physical quantity.
For example,
• Temperature in Karachi during a given week
– Depends upon?
• Rainfall in Pakistan during the year
– Depends upon?
• Your voice signals is a function of time and frequency.
Introduction to Communication Systems (1)
Various types of signals in communications:
Electrical signals
Voltages and currents
Acoustic signals
Sound
Video signals
Intensity level of a pixel (camera, video) over time
But, for enabling an electronic communication system, we convert all signals into electrical
signals.
Using various kinds of transducers
Introduction to Communication Systems (2)
Communication systems have input and output transducers as shown in Fig. 1.1–1.
The input transducer converts the message to an electrical signal, say a voltage or current, and another transducer at
the destination converts the output signal to the desired message form.
For instance, the transducers in a voice communication system could be a microphone at the input and a
loudspeaker at the output.
Communication System: It process input signals to produce output signals and manipulate signals.
Elements of Communication system
Three essential parts of any communication system: transmitter, transmission channel, and receiver.
Transmitter: It processes the input signal to produce a transmitted signal suited to the characteristics of the
transmission channel. Signal processing for transmission almost always involves modulation and may also
include coding.
Transmission channel: It is the electrical medium that bridges the distance from source to destination. It may be
a pair of wires, a coaxial cable, or a radio wave or laser beam.
Every channel introduces some amount of transmission loss or attenuation, so the signal power decreases
with increasing distance.
Elements of Communication system (1)
Transmission Channel can be:
Guided: Copper wire, coaxial cable, optical fiber, twisted pair cable etc.
Unguided: Free space, Air etc
Receiver: It operates on the output signal from the channel in preparation for delivery to the transducer at the destination.
It includes amplification, to compensate for transmission loss, and demodulation and decoding to reverse the signal
processing performed at the transmitter.
Filtering is another important function at the receiver due to various unwanted undesirable effects crop up in the
course of signal transmission.
Contamination in Transmission Channel:
Attenuation is undesirable since it reduces signal strength at the receiver. More serious, however, are distortion,
interference, and noise, which alters the signal’s waveshape or spectrum.
Fig. 1.1–3a is a graph of an ideal 1101001 binary sequence as it leaves the transmitter.
Figures 1.1–3b through d show the contaminating effects of distortion, interference, and noise respectively.
Elements of Communication system (2)
Distortion: It is waveform perturbation caused by imperfect response of the system to the desired
signal itself. Unlike noise and interference, distortion disappears when the signal is turned off. If the
channel has a linear but distorting response, then distortion may be corrected, or at least reduced,
with the help of special filters called equalizers.
Interference: It is contamination by extraneous signals from human sources—other transmitters,
power lines and machinery, switching circuits, and so on. It occurs most often in radio systems
whose receiving antennas usually intercept several signals at the same time. Radio-frequency
interference (RFI) also appears in cable systems if the transmission wires or receiver circuitry pick
up signals radiated from nearby sources. With the exception of systems that employ code division
multiple access (CDMA), appropriate filtering removes interference to the extent that the interfering
signals occupy different frequency bands than the desired signal.
Noise: It refers to random and unpredictable electrical signals produced by natural processes both
internal and external to the system. When such random variations are superimposed on an
information-bearing signal, the message may be partially corrupted or totally obliterated. Filtering
reduces noise contamination, but there inevitably remains some amount of noise that cannot be
eliminated. This noise constitutes one of the fundamental system limitations.
Elements of Communication system (3)
Elements of Communication system (4)
Fundamental Limitations
Technological problems: It includes such diverse considerations as hardware availability, economic
factors, governmental regulations, and so on.
These are problems of feasibility that can be solved in theory, even though perfect solutions may
not be practical.
On the other hand are the fundamental physical limitations, the laws of nature. It dictates what can or
cannot be accomplished, irrespective of the technological problems.
Two fundamental limitations of information transmission by electrical means are bandwidth and
noise.
Fundamental Limitations (1)
Bandwidth:
It applies to both signals and systems as a measure of speed.
When a signal changes rapidly with time, its frequency content, or spectrum, extends over a wide
range, and the signal has a large bandwidth.
Similarly, the ability of a system to follow signal variations is reflected in its usable frequency
response, or transmission bandwidth.
All electrical systems contain energy-storage elements, and stored energy cannot be changed
instantaneously.
Every communication system has a finite bandwidth B that limits the rate of signal variations.
Communication under real-time conditions requires sufficient transmission bandwidth to accommodate
the signal spectrum; otherwise, severe distortion will result.
Fundamental Limitations (2)
Bandwidth:
For example, a bandwidth of several megahertz is needed for a TV video signal, while the much
slower variations of a voice signal fit into B=3kHz.
For a digital signal with r symbols per second, the bandwidth must be B ≥ r/2.
In the case of information transmission without a real-time constraint, the available bandwidth
determines the maximum signal speed.
The time required to transmit a given amount of information is therefore inversely proportional
to B.
Fundamental Limitations (3)
Noise: It imposes a second limitation on information transmission.
At any temperature above absolute zero, thermal energy causes microscopic particles to exhibit random
motion.
The random motion of charged particles such as electrons generates random currents or voltages called
thermal noise.
Thermal noise appears in every communication system.
Noise is measured by relative to an information signal in terms of the signal-to-noise power ratio S/N (or
SNR).
Thermal noise power is ordinarily quite small, and S/N can be so large that the noise goes unnoticed.
At lower values of S/N, however, noise degrades fidelity in analog communication and produces errors in
digital communication.
These problems become most severe on long-distance links when the transmission loss reduces the received
signal power down close to the noise level.
Fundamental Limitations (4)
Noise:
Amplification at the receiver is then to no avail, because the noise will be amplified along
with the signal.
Taking both limitations into account, Shannon (1948) stated that the rate of information
transmission cannot exceed the channel capacity.
𝑆 𝑆
𝐶 = 𝐵 log 2 1 + = 3.32 B log10 1 +
𝑁 𝑁
This relationship, known as the Hartley-Shannon law, sets an upper limit on the performance
of a communication system with a given bandwidth and signal-to-noise ratio. This law
assumes the noise is random with a gaussian distribution, and the information is randomly
coded.
Problem
The standard 3002 voice-grade lines have a nominal SNR of 25 dB and a
bandwidth ranging from 300 to 3400 Hz. Compute the channel capacity.
Solution:
𝑆
𝐶 = 𝐵 log 2 1 +
𝑁
=3100 log 2 (1+316) (power gain of 25 dB =316)
= 3100 log 2 317
= 25,755 bps
Modulation
Modulation and coding are operations performed at the transmitter to achieve efficient and reliable
information transmission.
Modulation Methods:
It involves two waveforms: a modulating signal that represents the message and a carrier wave that suits
the particular application.
A modulator systematically alters the carrier wave in correspondence with the variations of the modulating
signal. The resulting modulated wave thereby “carries” the message information.
Modulation is a reversible operation, so the message can be retrieved by the complementary process of
demodulation.
Figure 1.2–1 depicts a portion of an analog modulating signal (part a) and the corresponding modulated
waveform obtained by varying the amplitude of a sinusoidal carrier wave (part b). This is the familiar
amplitude modulation (AM) used for radio broadcasting and other applications.
A message may also be impressed on a sinusoidal carrier by frequency modulation (FM) or phase
modulation (PM).
Modulation (1)
All methods for sinusoidal carrier modulation are grouped under the heading of continuous-
wave (CW) modulation.
Example: The transmission of voice through air is accomplished by generating carrier tones
in the vocal cords and modulating these tones with muscular actions of the oral cavity. you act
as a CW modulator whenever you speak. Thus, what the ear hears as speech is a modulated
acoustic wave similar to an AM signal.
Most long-distance transmission systems employ CW modulation with a carrier frequency
much higher than the highest frequency component of the modulating signal.
The spectrum of the modulated signal then consists of a band of frequency components
clustered around the carrier frequency.
Under these conditions, we say that CW modulation produces frequency translation. In AM
broadcasting, for example, the message spectrum typically runs from 100 Hz to 5 kHz; if the
carrier frequency is 600 kHz, then the spectrum of the modulated carrier covers 595–605 kHz.
Modulation (2)
Another modulation method, called pulse modulation, has a periodic train of short pulses as the
carrier wave.
Figure 1.2–1c shows a waveform with pulse amplitude modulation (PAM). Notice that this PAM
wave consists of short samples extracted from the analog signal at the top of the figure.
Sampling is an important signal-processing technique, and, subject to certain conditions,
it is possible to reconstruct an entire waveform from periodic samples.
But pulse modulation by itself does not produce the frequency translation needed for
efficient signal transmission. Some transmitters therefore combine pulse and CW
modulation.
Modulation (3)
Need and Benefits of Modulation
The primary purpose of modulation in a communication system is to generate a modulated signal suited to the
characteristics of transmission channel.
Modulation for Efficient Transmission:
Signal transmission over appreciable distance always involves a traveling electromagnetic wave, with or
without a guiding medium.
The efficiency of any particular transmission method depends upon the frequency of the signal being
transmitted.
By exploiting the frequency-translation property of CW modulation, message information can be
impressed on a carrier whose frequency has been selected for the desired transmission method.
As a case in point, efficient line-of-sight radio propagation requires antennas whose physical dimensions
are at least 1/10 of the signal’s wavelength.
Unmodulated transmission of an audio signal containing frequency components down to 100 Hz would
thus call for antennas some 300 km long. Modulated transmission at 100 MHz, as in FM broadcasting,
allows a practical antenna size of about one meter. At frequencies below 100 MHz, other propagation
modes have better efficiency with reasonable antenna sizes.
Need and Benefits of Modulation (1)
Need and Benefits of Modulation (2)
Need and Benefits of Modulation (3)
Modulation to Overcome Hardware Limitations:
The design of a communication system may be constrained by the cost and availability of hardware,
whose performance often depends upon the frequencies involved.
Modulation permits the designer to place a signal in some frequency range that avoids hardware
limitations.
A particular concern along this line is the question of fractional bandwidth, defined as absolute
bandwidth divided by the center frequency.
Hardware costs and complications are minimized if the fractional bandwidth is kept within 1–10 percent.
Fractional-bandwidth considerations account for the fact that modulation units are found in receivers as
well as in transmitters.
It likewise follows that signals with large bandwidth should be modulated on high frequency carriers.
Since information rate is proportional to bandwidth, according to the Hartley-Shannon law, high
information rate requires a high carrier frequency. For instance, a 5 GHz microwave system can
accommodate 10,000 times as much information in a given time interval as a 500 kHz radio channel.
Going even higher in the electromagnetic spectrum, one optical laser beam has a bandwidth potential
equivalent to 10 million TV channels.
Need and Benefits of Modulation (4)
Modulation to Reduce Noise and Interference:
A brute-force method for combating noise and interference is to increase the signal power until it
overwhelms the contaminations.
But increasing power is costly and may damage equipment.
Modulation have the valuable property of suppressing both noise and interference. This property is
called wideband noise reduction because it requires the transmission bandwidth to be much greater
than the bandwidth of the modulating signal.
Wideband modulation thus allows the designer to exchange increased bandwidth for decreased
signal power, a trade-off implied by the Hartley-Shannon law. Higher carrier frequency may be needed
to accommodate wideband modulation.
Need and Benefits of Modulation (5)
Modulation for Frequency Assignment:
Tuning a radio or television set to a particular station selects one of the many signals being
received at that time.
Since each station has a different assigned carrier frequency, the desired signal can be separated
from the others by filtering.
Were it not for modulation, only one station could broadcast in a given area; otherwise, two or
more broadcasting stations would create a hopeless jumble of interference
Need and Benefits of Modulation (6)
Modulation for Multiplexing:
Multiplexing is the process of combining several signals for simultaneous transmission on one
channel.
Frequency-division multiplexing (FDM) uses CW modulation to put each signal on a different
carrier frequency, and a bank of filters separates the signals at the destination.
Time-division multiplexing (TDM) uses pulse modulation to put samples of different signals in
non-overlapping time slots.
In Fig. 1.2–1c, for instance, the gaps between pulses could be filled with samples from other
signals. A switching circuit at the destination then separates the samples for signal reconstruction.
Applications of multiplexing include FM stereophonic broadcasting, cable TV, and long-distance
telephone.
Need and Benefits of Modulation (7)
A variation of multiplexing is multiple access (MA).
Multiplexing involves a fixed assignment of the common communications resource (such as
frequency spectrum) at the local level, MA involves the remote sharing of the resource.
For example, code-division multiple access (CDMA) assigns a unique code to each digital
cellular user, and the individual transmissions are separated by correlation between the codes of
the desired transmitting and receiving parties. Since CDMA allows different users to share the
same frequency band simultaneously, it provides another way of increasing communication
efficiency.
Electromagnetic Spectrum
Electromagnetic Spectrum (1)
Electromagnetic spectrum, the entire distribution of electromagnetic radiation according to frequency,
wavelength and energy.
Although all electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light in a vacuum, they do so at a wide range
of frequencies, wavelengths, and photon energies.
The electromagnetic spectrum comprises the span of all electromagnetic radiation and consists of many
subranges, commonly referred to as portions, such as visible light or ultraviolet radiation.
The various portions bear different names based on differences in behavior in the emission,
transmission, and absorption of the corresponding waves and also based on their different practical
applications.
The entire electromagnetic spectrum, from the lowest to the highest frequency (longest to shortest
wavelength), includes all radio waves, microwave waves, infrared radiation, visible light, ultraviolet
radiation, X-rays, and gamma rays. Nearly all frequencies and wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation
can be used for spectroscopy.
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