Chapter-3 (Data and Signals)
Prepared by-
Shyla Afroge & S. M. Mahedy Hasan
Assistant Professor, Dept. of CSE
RUET, Rajshahi-6204, Bangladesh
Note
To be transmitted, data must be transformed to electromagnetic signals.
Analog data
✓The term analog data refers to information that is continuous.
✓Analog data take on continuous values.
✓Analog data, such as the sounds made by a human voice, take on continuous values.
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Digital data
✓Digital data refers to information that has discrete states.
✓It can take discrete values.
✓Data are stored in computer memory in the form of 0’s and 1’s.
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Analog and digital signals
✓ An analog signal has infinitely many levels of intensity over a period of time.
✓ Analog signals can have an infinite number of values in a range.
✓ Digital signals can have only a limited number of values.
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Note
In data communications, we commonly use periodic analog signals and nonperiodic digital
signals.
Why Periodic Analog Signals?
• Analog signals are well-suited for continuous waveforms like sound, radio waves, and TV signals.
Periodic signals, such as sine waves, are easy to generate and transmit over long distances.
• Periodic analog signals serve as carrier waves that can be modulated to carry data.
• Fiber optic systems, where continuous light waves (analog signals) are used to carry data.
Why Non-Periodic Digital Signals?
• Nonperiodic digital signals are ideal for representing discrete data (binary 0s and 1s) used in
computing and digital communications.
• Nonperiodic signals can encode a wide range of information without the constraint of repeating
patterns, allowing for efficient representation of files, messages, or other forms of digital data.
• Nonperiodic signals are often synchronized in data communication systems, making them easier to
manage in systems like Ethernet or USB.
Periodic and Non-Periodic Signals
✓ A periodic signal completes a pattern within a measurable time frame, called a period, and repeats that
pattern over subsequent identical periods.
✓ The completion of one full pattern is called a cycle.
✓ A nonperiodic signal changes without exhibiting a pattern or cycle that repeats over time.
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Periodic and Non-Periodic Signals
✓ Periodic analog signals can be classified as simple or composite.
✓ A simple periodic analog signal, a sine wave, cannot be decomposed into simpler signals.
✓ A composite periodic analog signal is composed of multiple sine waves.
✓ Sine wave is an example of a periodic analog signal. A sine wave can be represented by three parameters: the peak
amplitude, the frequency, and the phase.
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Periodic analog signals
✓ Peak Amplitude: The peak amplitude of a signal is the absolute value of its highest intensity, proportional to the energy it carries, which
indicates the highest level of the signal's strength. The following figure presents two signals with same phase and frequency but different
amplitudes.
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Periodic analog signals
✓ Period: Period refers to the amount of time, in seconds, a signal needs to complete 1 cycle. Frequency refers to the
number of periods in 1 s.
Frequency and period are the inverse of each other.
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Periodic analog signals
Figure: Two signals with the same amplitude and phase but different frequencies
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Periodic analog signals
Table: Units of period and frequency
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Periodic analog signals
Example: The period of a signal is 100ms. What is its frequency in kilohertz.
Solution:
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Periodic analog signals
❑ Frequency
✓ Frequency is the rate of change with respect to time.
✓ If the value of a signal changes over a very short span of time, its frequency is high.
✓ If it changes over a long span of time, its frequency is low.
Note
If a signal does not change at all, its frequency is zero. If a signal changes instantaneously, its frequency is
infinite.
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Periodic analog signals
Phase: Phase describes the position of the waveform relative to time 0. A phase difference of 180° means they are completely out
of phase.
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Periodic analog signals
Example: A sine wave is offset 1/6 cycle with respect to time 0. What is its phase in degrees and radians.
Solution: We know that 1 complete cycle is 360°. Therefore, 1/6 cycle is
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Time Domain and Frequency Domain Plot of Sine Wave
A complete sine wave in the time domain can be represented by one single spike in the frequency
domain.
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Time Domain and Frequency Domain Plot of Sine Wave
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Composite Periodic Signal
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Decomposition of a composite periodic signal in the time and frequency domains
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Non-Periodic Composite Signal
✓ It can be the signal created by a microphone or a telephone set when a word or two is pronounced.
✓ In a time-domain representation of this composite signal, there are an infinite number of simple sine frequencies.
✓ Although the number of frequencies in a human voice is infinite, the range is limited. A normal human being can create
a continuous range of frequencies between 0 and 4 kHz.
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Bandwidth
• The bandwidth of a composite signal is the difference between the highest and the lowest frequencies
contained in that signal.
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Bandwidth
Example: If a periodic signal is decomposed into five sine waves with frequencies of 100, 300, 500, 700,
and 900 Hz, what is its bandwidth? Draw the spectrum, assuming all components have a maximum
amplitude of 10 V.
Solution: Let fh be the highest frequency, fl the lowest frequency, and B the bandwidth. Then,
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Bandwidth
Example: A periodic signal has a bandwidth of 20 Hz. The highest frequency is 60 Hz. What is the lowest
frequency? Draw the spectrum if the signal contains all frequencies of the same amplitude.
Solution: Let fh be the highest frequency, fl the lowest frequency, and B the bandwidth. Then
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Bandwidth
Example: A nonperiodic composite signal has a bandwidth of 200 kHz, of 140 kHz and peak amplitude of
20 V. The two extreme frequencies have an amplitude of with a middle frequency 0. Draw the frequency
domain of the signal.
Solution: The lowest frequency must be at 40 kHz and the highest at 240 kHz.
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Digital signal
✓ ‘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.
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Digital signal
✓ A digital signal has eight levels. How many bits are needed per level? We calculate the number of bits
from the formula,
Each signal level is represented by 3 bits.
✓ A digital signal has nine levels. How many bits are needed per level? We calculate the number of bits
by using the formula. Each signal level is represented by 3.17 bits. However, this answer is not
realistic. The number of bits sent per level needs to be an integer as well as a power of 2. For this
example, 4 bits can represent one level.
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Digital signal
Example: Assume we need to download text documents at the rate of 100 pages per sec. What is the required
bit rate of the channel?
Solution: A page is an average of 24 lines with 80 characters in each line. If we assume that one character
requires 8 bits (ascii), the bit rate is
Example: A digitized voice channel, as we will see in Chapter 4, is made by digitizing a 4-kHz bandwidth
analog voice signal. We need to sample the signal at twice the highest frequency (two samples per hertz). We
assume that each sample requires 8 bits. What is the required bit rate?
Solution: The bit rate can be calculated as,
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Digital signal
Example: What is the bit rate for high-definition TV (HDTV)?
Solution: HDTV uses digital signals to broadcast high quality video signals. The HDTV screen is normally a
ratio of 16 : 9. There are 1920 by 1080 pixels per screen, and the screen is renewed 30 times per second.
Twenty-four bits represents one color pixel.
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Digital signal as a Composite Analog Signal
✓ If the digital signal is periodic, the decomposed signal has a frequency domain representation with an infinite
bandwidth and discrete frequencies. If the digital signal is nonperiodic, the decomposed signal still has an infinite
bandwidth, but the frequencies are continuous.
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Transmission of Digital Signals
✓ Digital signal can be transmitted by using one of the two approaches:- 1) baseband transmission 2) broadband
transmission (using modulation).
1. Baseband transmission: Baseband transmission means sending a digital signal over a channel without changing
the digital signal to an analog signal. Baseband transmission requires that we have a low-pass channel, a channel with
a bandwidth that starts from zero.
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Transmission of Digital Signals
✓ Two cases of a baseband transmission: 1. Low pass channel with wide bandwidth 2. Low pass channel with limited
bandwidth.
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Transmission of Digital Signals
1. Low pass channel with wide bandwidth: Baseband transmission of a digital signal that preserves
the shape of the digital signal is possible only if we have a low-pass channel with an infinite or very wide
bandwidth.
Figure: Baseband transmission using a dedicated medium
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Transmission of Digital Signals
2. Broadband Transmission (Using Modulation): Broadband transmission or modulation means changing the digital
signal to an analog signal for transmission. Modulation allows us to use a bandpass channel-a channel with a
bandwidth that does not start from zero. Note that a low-pass channel can be considered a bandpass channel
with the lower frequency starting at zero.
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Transmission of Digital Signals
✓ Digital signal is converted to a composite analog signal. We have used a single-frequency analog signal the amplitude
of the carrier has been changed to look like the digital signal.
✓ At the receiver, the received analog signal is converted to digital, and the result is a replica of what has been sent.
Figure: Modulation of a digital signal for transmission on a bandpass channel
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Transmission of Digital Signals
Note
If the available channel is a bandpass channel, we cannot send the digital signal
directly to the channel, we need to convert the digital signal to an analog signal
before transmission.
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Transmission Impairment
✓ To send data, we have to send it through a transmission medium.
✓ 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,
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Transmission Impairment
1) Attenuation
✓ Attenuation means a loss of energy.
✓ As the signal travels through a transmission medium, it’s intensity falls at the rate of 𝑑 2 .
✓ When a signal, simple or composite, travels through a medium, it loses some of its energy in overcoming the resistance
of the medium.
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Transmission Impairment
✓ Decibel is used to show the gain or lost of strength in the signal.
✓ The decibel (dB) measures the relative strengths of two or one signal at two different points.
✓ It decides how far a signal can be sent without amplification.
✓ The decibel is negative if a signal is attenuated and positive if a signal is amplified.
𝒅𝑩 = 𝟏𝟎log𝟏𝟎𝑷𝟐/𝑷𝟏
P1 – power of input/transmitted signal
P2 – power of output/received signal
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Transmission Impairment
✓ To compensate for this loss, amplifiers are used to amplify the signal.
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Transmission Impairment
Example: Suppose a signal travels through a transmission medium and its power is reduced to one-half. This
means that P2 is (1/2)P1. In this case, the attenuation (loss of power) can be calculated as,
Solution:
Example: A signal travels through an amplifier, and its power is increased 10 times. This means that P2 = 10P1
. In this case, the amplification (gain of power) can be calculated as,
Solution:
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Transmission Impairment
2. 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.
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Transmission Impairment
Figure: Distortion
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Transmission Impairment
3. Noise
✓ Noise is another cause of impairment.
✓ Several types of noise, such as thermal noise, induced noise, crosstalk, and impulse noise.
✓ 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.
✓ Crosstalk is the effect of one wire on the other.
✓ Impulse noise is a spike (a signal with high energy in a very short time) that comes from power lines, lightning, and so
on.
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Transmission Impairment
✓ To measure the quality of a system the SNR is often used. It indicates the strength of the signal with
respect to the noise power in the system.
✓ 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.
✓ SNR is the ratio of two powers, it is often described in decibel units, 𝑺𝑵𝑹𝑫𝑩 = 𝟏𝟎𝒍𝒐𝒈𝟏𝟎 (𝑺𝑵𝑹)
✓ Where, 𝑺𝑵𝑹 = 𝒂𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒈𝒆 𝒔𝒊𝒈𝒏𝒂𝒍 𝒑𝒐𝒘𝒆𝒓ൗ𝒂𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒈𝒆 𝒏𝒐𝒊𝒔𝒆 𝒑𝒐𝒘𝒆𝒓
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Signal to Noise Ratio
Figure: Two cases of SNR: a high SNR and a low SNR
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Signal to Noise Ratio
Example: The power of a signal is 10 mW and the power of the noise is 1 μW; what are the values of SNR
and SNRdB ?
Solution: The values of 𝑺𝑵𝑹 and 𝑺𝑵𝑹𝑫𝑩 can be calculated as follows:
Example: The values of SNR and SNRdB and for a noiseless channel are
Solution:
Note: We can never achieve this ratio in real life, it is an ideal.
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Data Rate Limits
✓ Data rate defines how fast we can send data (bits per second) over a channel. Data rate
depends on three factors:-
1. Bandwidth available.
2. The level of the signals (how many levels).
3. The quality of the channel (level of noise).
✓ Two theoretical formulas were developed to calculate the data rate: 1) Nyquist for a
noiseless channel 2) Shannon capacity for noisy channel.
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Data Rate Limits
❖ Nyquist Bit Rate: Noiseless Channel
For a noiseless channel, the Nyquist bit rate
𝑩𝒊𝒕 𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒆 = 𝟐 ∗ 𝑩 ∗ 𝑳𝒐𝒈𝟐 𝑳
Here, B is the bandwidth of the channel, L is the number of signal levels used to represent data, and Bit rate in bits
per second.
✓ For a given bandwidth, any desired bit rate can be achieved by increasing the number of signal levels.
✓ If the number of levels in a signal is just 2, the receiver can easily distinguish between 0 and 1.
✓ If the level of a signal is 64, the receiver must be very sophisticated to distinguish between 64 different levels.
✓ Therefore, increasing the level of signals, may reduce the reliability of the system.
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Data Rate Limits
Example: Consider a noiseless channel with a bandwidth of 3000 Hz transmitting a signal with two signal levels. The
maximum bit rate can be calculated as,
Solution:
Example: Consider the same noiseless channel transmitting a signal with four signal levels (for each level, we send 2
bits). The maximum bit rate can be calculated as,
Solution:
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Data Rate Limits
❖ Noisy Channel: Shannon Capacity
Shannon’s theorem gives the capacity of a system in the presence of noise.
Capacity = B * 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.
Example: Consider an extremely noisy channel in which the value of the signal-to-noise ratio is almost zero. In other
words, the noise is so strong that the signal is faint. For this channel the capacity C is calculated as,
Note : This means that the capacity of this channel is zero regardless of the bandwidth. In other words,
we cannot receive any data through this channel.
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Data Rate Limits
Example: A telephone line normally has a bandwidth of 3000. The signal-to-noise ratio is usually 3162. For
this channel the capacity is calculated as,
Example: Assume that SNRdB = 36 and the channel bandwidth is 2 MHz. The theoretical channel capacity
can be calculated as,
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Data Rate Limits
✓ When the SNR is high, we can assume that SNR+1 is as same as SNR.
✓ In that case, the theoretical channel capacity will be, Capacity = B * 𝑺𝑵𝑹𝒅𝒃 /3
𝐶 ≈ 𝐵 ⋅ log 2 (SNR)
✓ The unit of SNR in this case is typically expressed in linear scale, not in decibels (dB). To convert it to dB ,
the formula becomes:
𝐶 ≈ 𝐵 ⋅ log 2 10SNR( dB)/10
✓ Since log 2 10𝑥 = 𝑥 ⋅ log 2 (10), where log 2 (10) ≈ 3.32, we get:
SNR( dB)
𝐶≈𝐵⋅ ⋅ 3.32
10
✓ This can be further simplified to:
𝐵 ⋅ SNR( dB)
𝐶≈
3
✓ Therefore, when the SNR is high, the capacity approximation is:
SNR( dB)
𝐶≈𝐵⋅
3
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Data Rate Limits
✓ When the SNR is high, we can assume that SNR+1 is as same as SNR.
✓ In that case, the theoretical channel capacity will be, Capacity = B * 𝑺𝑵𝑹𝒅𝒃 /3
Example: Assume that SNRdB = 36 and the channel bandwidth is 2 MHz. The theoretical channel capacity
can be calculated as,
Capacity=2*36/3= 24 Mbps.
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Data Rate Limits
Example: We have a channel with a 1-MHz bandwidth. The SNR for this channel is 63. What are the
appropriate bit rate and signal level?
Solution: First, we use the Shannon formula to find the upper limit.
The Shannon formula gives us 6 Mbps, the upper limit. For better performance we choose something lower, 4 Mbps, for
example. Then we use the Nyquist formula to find the number of signal levels.
𝑩𝒊𝒕 𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒆 = 𝟐 ∗ 𝑩 ∗ 𝑳𝒐𝒈𝟐 𝑳
4 = 2 ∗ 1 ∗ 𝑙𝑜𝑔2 𝐿
𝐿=4
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Data Rate Limits
The Shannon capacity gives us the upper limit; the Nyquist formula tells us
how many signal levels we need.
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Measurement Of Network Performance
Network performance depends on some factors:-
❖ Bandwidth: The bandwidth of a network is given by the number of bits that can be transmitted
over the network in a certain period of time.
✓ Bandwidth in BPS: Bandwidth in bits to the speed of bit transmission in a channel or link. per
second, refers
✓ Bandwidth in Hertz: It refers to the range of frequencies in a composite signal or the range of
frequencies that a channel can pass.
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Measurement Of Network Performance
Network performance depends on some factors:-
❖ Throughput
✓ Actual amount of data that can passes through the medium.
✓ The throughput is a measure of how fast we can actually send data through a network.
✓ 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.
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Measurement Of Network Performance
Example: A network with bandwidth of 10 Mbps can pass only an average of 12,000 frames per minute with
each frame carrying an average of 10,000 bits. What is the throughput of this network?
Solution: We can calculate the throughput as
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Measurement Of Network Performance
❖ Latency
✓ Latency in network performance refers to the amount of time it takes for a data packet to travel
from its source to its destination across a network.
✓ Latency is made of four components.
✓ Latency = propagation time +transmission time + queuing time + processing delay
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Measurement Of Network Performance
❖ Propagation Time
✓ The time it takes for a signal to travel from the sender to the receiver through the transmission medium.
✓ The propagation time is calculated by dividing the distance by the propagation speed.
✓ Propagation Time = Distance / Propagation Speed
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Measurement Of Network Performance
Propagation speed: Speed at which a bit travels though the medium from source to destination.
Example: What is the propagation time if the distance between the two points is 12,000 km? Assume the
propagation speed to be 2.4 × 108 m/s in cable.
Solution: We can calculate the propagation time as
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Measurement Of Network Performance
❖ Transmission Time
✓ The time it takes to push all the bits of a data packet onto the transmission medium.
✓ In data communications we don't send just 1 bit, we send a message.
✓ 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
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Measurement Of Network Performance
Example: What are the propagation time and the transmission time for a 5-Mbyte message (an image) if the
bandwidth of the network is 1 Mbps? Assume that the distance between the sender and the receiver is
12,000 km and that light travels at 2.4 × 108 m/s.
Solution:
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Measurement Of Network Performance
❖ Queuing Time
✓ Queuing delay – time the packet spends in routing queues.
✓ The time a packet spends waiting in a queue before it is processed or transmitted by a network
device.
✓ The time a packet spends in a queue, waiting to be transmitted. This delay increases with
network congestion.
✓ The time needed for each intermediate or end device to hold the message before it can be
processed.
✓ 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.
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Measurement Of Network Performance
❖ Processing delay
✓ The time it takes for a network device to examine a packet, perform necessary operations (e.g.,
header inspection, routing table lookup), and prepare the packet for forwarding.
✓ The time it takes for devices (routers, switches) to process the packet header and make forwarding
decisions.
✓ Packet header contains metadata and control information that is used by networking devices to
manage, route, and deliver the packet to its intended destination.
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Thank You ☺
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