TRANSMISSION MEDIA

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter the learner shall be able to;

i. Explain the different guided transmission medium such as the twisted pair, coaxial
cable and fiber optic

ii. Explain different unguided transmission medium such as the satellite and
microwave
iii. Explain the transmission impairments such as noise and attenuation

2.1 Introduction to Transmission Media

Communication is the activity or process of exchanging information in
mutual understanding form. A computer system can be vast resource of
information. Once this system is connected to a network, this information
can be shared among all other users. A communication media is required
to connect different computer systems to
Transmission
media

Guided Unguided

Twisted-Pair Coaxial Fiber-optic Terrestrial

Satellite Infrared
cable cable cable microwave

Figure 2.1 Types of transmission media

facilitate the information exchange. Following diagram will give a clear

picture of different type of transmission media.
2.2 Guided Transmission Media
Guided/physical/non-wireless/bounded media have a physical link
between sender and receiver. Mainly there are three categories of
guided media: twisted-Pair, coaxial, and fiber-optic.

Twisted-Pair Cable

A twisted consist of two conductors (usually copper), each with its own
colored plastic insulation. In the past, two parallel wires were used for
communication. However, electromagnetic interference from devices
such as a motor can create over noise those wires. If the two wires are
parallel, the wire closest to the source of the noise gets more interference
than the wire further away. Which results in an uneven load and a
damaged signal.

If, however, the two wires are twisted around each other at regular
intervals (between 2 to 12 twist per foot), each wire is the closer to the
noise source for half the time and the further away the other half. With
the twisting interference can be equalized for both wires. Twisting does
not always eliminate the impact of noise, but does significantly reduce it

Twisted cable comes in two forms: unshielded and shielded.

Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) cable

UTP consists of a number of twisted pairs with simple plastic casing. UTP
is commonly

used in telephone system.

The Electrical Industry Association (EIA) divides UTP into different
categories by quality grade. The rating for each category refers to
conductor size, electrical characteristics, and twists per foot.

Category 1: Applies to transmit traditional UTP telephones cabling,

which is designed to carry voice but not data.

Category 2: Certifies UTP cabling for bandwidth up to 4 Mbps and

consists of four pair of wires. Since 4 Mbps is slower than most
networking technologies in the use today.
Category 2 is rarely encountered in networking environment.

Category 3: Certifies UTP cabling for bandwidth up to 10Mbps. This

includes most conventional networking technologies, such as 10BaseT
Ethernet and 4Mbps token ring etc. Category 3 consists of four pairs,
each having minimum 3 twist per foot.

Category 4: Certifies UTP cabling for bandwidth up to 10Mbps. This

includes primarily 10BaseT Ethernet and 16Mbps token ring. Category 4
consists of four pairs.

Category5: Used for data transmission up to 100Mbps Category 5 also

consists of four pairs.

UTP is particularly prone to cross talk, and the shielding included with
STP is designed specifically to reduce this problem.

Shielded Twisted Pair (STP) cable

STP includes shielding to reduce cross talk as well as to limit the effects of
external interference. For most STP cables, this means that the wiring
includes a wire braid inside the cladding or sheath material as well as a
foil wrap around each individual wire. This shield improves the cable's
transmission and interference characteristics, which, in tern, support
higher bandwidth over longer distance than UTP.
Coaxial Cable: Coaxial cable, commonly called coax, has two
conductors that share the same axis. A solid copper wire runs down the
center of the cable, and this wire is surrounded by plastic foam
insulation. The foam is surrounded by a second conductor, wire mesh
tube, metallic foil, or both. The wire mesh protects the wire from EMI. It
is often called the shield. A tough plastic jacket forms the cover of the
cable, providing protection and insulation.

Where Ethernet is concerned, there are two types of coaxial cable, called
this Ethernet (also known as thinnet or thinwire,) and thick Ethernet (also
known as thinnet or thickwire). The Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE) designates these cable types as 10Base2 and 10Base5,
respectively, where these notations indicates:

Total bandwidth for the technology: in this case, 10 means 10Mbps

Base: indicates that the network uses baseband signaling and this
applies to both types of cable.

2 or 5: a rough indicator of maximum segment length, measured in

hundreds of meters; thinwire support a maximum segment length of 185
meters, which rounds up to 200; thickwire supports a maximum segment
length of 500 meter

Fiber Optic Cable: fiber optic cable transmits light signals rather than
electrical signals. It is enormously more efficient than the other network
transmission media. As soon as it comes down in price (both in terms of
the cable and installation cost), fiber optic will be the choice for network
cabling.

A light pulse can be used to signal a ‗1‘ bit; the absence of a pulse
signals a ‗0‘ bit. Visible light has a frequency of about 108 MHz, so the
bandwidth of an optical transmission system is potentially enormous.

An optical transmission system has three components: the transmission

medium, the light source and the detector. The transmission medium is
an ultra-thin fiber of glass or fused silica. The light source is either a LED
(Light Emit Diode) or a laser diode, both of which emits light pulses when
a electrical current is applied. The detector is a photo diode, which
generates an electrical pulse when light falls on it.

Led Photo Diode

Silica tube

A cable may contain a single fiber, but often fibers are bundled together
in the center of the cable. Optical fiber are smaller and lighter than
copper wire. One optical fiber is approximately the same diameter as a
human hair.
Advantages of Fiber Optic
 Noise resistance: it is immune to Electromagnetic Interference (EMI)
 Less signal attenuation: signal can run for miles without requiring
regeneration
 Higher bandwidth: fiber optic cable can support dramatically higher
bandwidths (and hence data rate) than all other cables. Currently,
data rates and bandwidth utilization over fiber-optic cable are
limited not by the medium but by the signal generation and
reception technology available. A typical bandwidth for fiber optic is
100Mbps to 1Gbps.

Disadvantages of Fiber Optic

 Cost : most expensive among all the cables
 Installation / maintenance: is high
 Fragility : glass fiber is more easily broken than wire
Summary Table of the Characteristic of All Cable Type

Fiber
Factor UTP STP Coaxial
Optic

Cost Lowest Moderate Moderate Highest

Installatio Fairly Fairly

Easy Difficult
n easy easy
Bandwidth 10 Mbps 16 Mbps 10 Mbps 100 Mbps
Capacity –
1 Gbps

Node 2 2 30 2
Capacity (10Base2)
Per 100
Segment (10Base5)

Attenuatio
High High Lower Lowest
n
EMI Most Less Less No effect
vulnerable vulnerable vulnerable by EMI
to EMI than UTP than UTP
2.3 Unguided Transmission Media
Unguided/non-physical/wireless/unbounded media have no physical link
between sender and receiver.
There has been increasing need for mobile users to connect to a
network. The answer for their needs is wireless. In wireless
communications, space (air) is the medium for the signals.

Wireless networking has some advantages over wired

networking:

• No wires needed. Running wires can be difficult in some cases;

such as wiring an existing building, wiring between buildings,
wiring across mountains, etc.
• Staying connected is important for mobile users. Wireless networks
allow users stay connected more hours each day. Users with
laptops may roam their work space without losing network
connection and without logging into another machine. This
increases the productivity of workers.
• Wireless networks can grow without much difficulty compared with
wired networks. Making a wired network larger often involves
wiring and usually costly.
• Wireless networks are not confined to an area. There is no long
term commitment as in the wired networks.

Bandwidth for wireless transmission

The principle of wireless communication is to send and receive

electromagnetic wave using antenna. Several frequency bands are used
for wireless communications.

• Radio—Frequencies between 30 MHz to 1 GHz

• Microwave—Frequencies between 1 GHz to 40 GHz
• Infrared—Frequencies between 3 x 1011 to 2 x 1014 Hz
The Electromagnetic spectrum used in communications (From
Tanenbaum Figure 2.11) As you noticed from the above figure, there are
some overlap between the bandwidths for wired media and wireless. The
only difference is whether they have solid wires carrying signals or not.

• Radio transmission: These are systems for AM or FM radio. They

are one form of communications and not used for computer
networks.
• Microwave transmission: We can classify them into three
categories; Terrestrial microwave, Satellite

Terrestrial Microwave

Microwaves do not follow the curvature of the earth therefore require

line of sight transmission and reception equipment. The distance
coverable by line of sight signals depends to a large extend on the
height of the antenna: the taller the antenna, the longer the sight
distance. Height allows the signals to travel farther without being
stopped by the curvature of the earth and raises the signals above many
surface obstacles, such as low hills and tall buildings that would
otherwise block transmission.

Microwave signals propagate in one direction at a time, which means

that two frequencies are necessary for two ways communication such as
telephone communication. One frequency is reserved for transmission in
one direction and other for transmission in other. Each frequency
requires its own transmitter and receiver. Today, both pieces of
equipment usually are combined in a single piece of equipment called
transceiver, which allows a single antenna to serve both frequencies and
functions.

River

Building A Building B

Terrestrial microwave systems are typically used when using cabling is

very costly and difficult to set.

Satellite Communication
Satellite transmission is much like line of sight microwave transmission
in which one of the stations is a satellite orbiting the earth. The principle
is the same as terrestrial
 Satellite

Mother Earth

Satellite dish

Satellite dish

USA
Singapore

microwave, with a satellite acting as a super-tall antenna and repeater.

Although in satellite transmission signals must still travel in straight
lines, the limitations imposed on distance by the curvature of the earth
are reduced. In this way, satellite relays allow microwave signals to span
continents and ocean with a single bounce.

Satellite microwave can provide transmission capability to and from any

location on earth, no mater how remote. This advantage makes high
quality communication available to undeveloped parts of the world
without requiring a huge investment in ground based infrastructure.
Satellite themselves are extremely expensive, of course, but leasing time
or frequencies on one can be relatively cheap.

Infrared Transmission

Infrared media uses infrared light to transmit signals. LEDs transmit the
signals, and photodiodes receive the signals. The remote control we use
for television, VCR and CD player use infrared technology to send and
receive signals.
Because infrared signals are in high frequency range, they have good
throughput. Infrared signals do have a downside; the signals cannot
penetrate walls or other objects, and they are diluted by strong light
sources.

2.4 Transmission Impairments:

With any communication system, there is a high possibility that
the signal that is received will differ from the signal that is
transmitted as a result of various transmission impairments. For
analog signals, these impairments introduce various random
modifications that degrade the signal quality. For digital signals,
bit errors are introduced: A binary 1 is transformed into a binary 0,
and vice versa.

The most significant impairments are the following:

 Attenuation
 Noise
a) Attenuation

When an electromagnetic signal is transmitted along any

medium, it gradually become weaker at greater distances, this is
referred to as attenuation. To solve this problem amplifier is
used. The amplifier boosts the signals and extends the
transmission distance.

b) Noise

Random electrical signals that can be picked up by the

transmission medium and result in degradation of the data.

c) Delay Distortion

This is a common phenomenon with guided transmission media.

The distortion is caused by the fact that the velocity of
propagation of a signal through a guided medium varies with
frequency. For a band limited signal, the velocity tends to be
highest near the centre frequency and fall off toward the two
edges of the band. Thus various frequency components of a
signal will arrive at the receiver at different times. This effect is
called delay distortion.

d) Jitters

Jitter is a variation or dislocation in the pulses of a digital

transmission; it may be thought of, in a way, as irregular pulses.
Jitter can manifest through variations in amplitude, signal
strength, and other elements of such waves. The usual causes
include connection timeouts, connection time lags, data traffic
congestion, and interference. Simply put, this jitter is an
undesirable output of system flaws and interruptions.