DIGITAL DATA COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUES

For two devices linked by a transmission medium to exchange data, a high

degree of cooperation is required.
Typically, data are transmitted one bit at a time over the medium.
• The timing of these bits must be the same for transmitter and receiver.
• Two common techniques for controlling this timing
• Asynchronous transmission
• Synchronous transmission.
• Data transmission is not an error-free process, and some means of
accounting for these errors is needed.
• Serial transmission of data; that is, data are transferred over a single signal
path rather than a parallel set of lines
ASYNCHRONOUS TRANSMISSION
• The strategy with this scheme is to avoid the timing problem by not
sending long, uninterrupted streams of bits.
• Instead, data are transmitted one character at a time, where each
character is five to eight bits in length.
• Timing or synchronization must only be maintained within each
character.
• The receiver has the opportunity to resynchronize at the beginning of
each new character.
• When no character is being transmitted, the line between transmitter
and receiver is in an idle state
• The definition of idle is equivalent to the signalling element for binary
1.
• The parity bit is set by the transmitter such that the total number of
ones in the character, including the parity bit, is even (even parity) or
odd (odd parity), depending on the convention being used.
ASYNCHRONOUS TRANSMISSION
SYNCHRONOUS TRANSMISSION
• A block of bits is transmitted in a steady stream without start and stop
codes.
• The block may be many bits in length.
• To prevent timing drift between transmitter and receiver, their clocks must
somehow be synchronized.
• To achieve this, each block begins with a preamble bit pattern and
generally ends with a postamble bit pattern.
• The data plus preamble, postamble, and control information are called a
frame.
• The exact format of the frame depends on which data link control
procedure is being used.
To achieve this, each block begins with a preamble bit pattern and generally ends with a postamble
bit pattern.
The data plus preamble, postamble, and control information are called a frame.
DETECTING AND CORRECTING ERRORS
Types of Errors
• In digital transmission systems, an error occurs when a bit is altered
between transmission and reception.
• A binary 1 is transmitted and a binary 0 is received, or a binary 0 is
transmitted and a binary 1 is received.
• Two general types of errors can occur: single-bit errors and burst errors.
• Single-bit error: is an isolated error condition that alters one bit but does
not affect nearby bits.
• Burst error: of length B is a contiguous sequence of B bits in which the first
and last bits and any number of intermediate bits are received in error.
• Consider the following probabilities defined with respect to errors in
transmitted frames:
• Pb: Probability that a bit is received in error; also known as the bit
error rate (BER)
• P1: Probability that a frame arrives with no bit errors
• P2: Probability that, with an error-detecting algorithm in use, a frame
arrives with one or more undetected errors
• P3: Probability that, with an error-detecting algorithm in use, a frame
arrives with one or more detected bit errors but no undetected bit
errors
• Case 1
• Consider the case in which no means are taken to detect errors.
• Then the probability of detected errors is zero
• Consider the case in which no means are taken to detect errors.
• Then the probability of detected errors is zero.
• To express the remaining probabilities, assume the probability that
any bit is in error is constant and independent for each bit. Then

𝑃𝑏 =Probability of single bit error (Bit Error Rate – BER)

F = Number of bits in a frame
P1= Probability that the entire frame is received without error
P2 = Probability that the frame contains at least one error
• The probability that a frame arrives with no bit errors decreases when the
probability of a single bit error increases.
• The probability that a frame arrives with no bit errors decreases with increasing
frame length for a given frame of bits, additional bits that constitute an error-
detecting code are added by the transmitter.
• This code is calculated as a function of the other transmitted bits.
• For a data block of k bits, the error-detecting algorithm yields an error-
detecting code of n – k bits, where ( n – k ) < k
• The error-detecting code, also referred to as the check bits, is appended to the
data block to produce a frame of n bits, which is then transmitted.
• The receiver separates the incoming frame into the k bits of data and (n – k) bits
of the error-detecting code.
• The receiver performs the same error-detecting calculation on the data bits
and compares this value with the value of the incoming error-detecting code.
• A detected error occurs if and only if there is a mismatch.
• The two methods used for error detection i. Parity check ii. Cyclic redundancy
check
At the Transmitter
• Suppose the original data has k bits.
• An error-detecting function f(data) is applied.
• This generates an error-detecting code (E).
𝐸 = 𝑓 data
• The error-detecting code has (n − k) [Link] transmitter sends:

Frame = Data (k bits) + Error Code (n−k bits)

So total frame length = n bits
• During Transmission
• The frame travels through the channel.
• Noise may corrupt some bits.
• The receiver gets Data′ (possibly altered).
At the Receiver
• Receiver applies the same function:
• 𝐸 ′ = 𝑓 data′
• It compares E′ with the received error code E.
• If E = E′
• → No error detected
→ Frame accepted
• If E ≠ E′
• → Error detected
→ Frame rejected or retransmission requested
• Parity Check
• The simplest error-detecting scheme is to append a parity bit to the end
of a block of data.
• A typical example is character transmission, in which a parity bit is
attached to each 7-bit IRA character.
• The value of this bit is selected so that the character has an even
number of 1s (even parity) or an odd number of 1s (odd parity).
• If two (or any even number) of bits are inverted due to error, an
undetected error occurs. Typically, even parity is used for synchronous
transmission and odd parity for asynchronous transmission.
• Even Parity
• Data: 1011001
Number of 1s = 4 (already even)
• Parity bit = 0
• Transmitted: 10110010
• If data were 1011000 (3 ones → odd),
Parity bit = 1 to make total number of 1s even.
• Odd Parity
• Data: 1011001
Number of 1s = 4 (even)
• Parity bit = 1 (to make total odd)
• Transmitted: 10110011