Chapter 1: Introduction
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Course Objectives
1. Present the mathematical basis and theory of signals and
systems that help describe and understand digital
communication techniques and equipment
2. Apply such concepts and ideas to information
transmission links which must be made robust in the
presence of noise and other impairments and perform at
rates that are as high as possible
3. Show how such transmission links are used in fixed and
mobile data communication systems for voice and video
transmissions
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Introduction - Basic Elements of Digital Comm. System
Functional block diagram of a typical digital communication system
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Introduction …
Source output (information source)
The output from an information source could be
Analog signal such as voice or video signal or
Digital signal that is discrete in time and having a finite number of
characters
Source encoding
The process of efficiently converting source outputs into a
sequence of binary digits, called information sequence
The representation of the source output in binary form should
have as little or no redundancy (data compression)
Ideally, the source message should be represented by as few as possible
binary digits
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Introduction …
Channel encoding
Introduce, in a controlled manner, some redundancy in the binary
information sequence
The redundancy is used at the receiver to overcome the effects of
noise and other interferences on the transmission channel
Trivial example: Repeat each binary digit n times
Non-trivial example: Taking k information bits at a time and
mapping each k-bit sequence into a unique n-bit sequence,
called the codeword
(n > k) measure of redundancy is the ratio k/n ( or n/k), called the
code rate
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Introduction …
• Digital Modulator
• An interface between the channel encoder and the
communication channel
• It maps the coded information sequence into signal waveforms
that can be transmitted over the channel
• Consider the coded sequence is to be transmitted one bit at a
time at some uniform rate R bits/s
• The modulator may simply map the binary digits as follows
0 s 0(t )=+cos2 ft 1 s (t )= 1 cos2 ft
This is an example of binary modulation in which each bit from
the encoder is transmitted separately
Called binary phase-shift keying – BPSK
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Introduction …
Alternatively, modulator may transmit b coded information
bits at a time using distinct waveforms si(t), i= 0,1,…M-1,
Called M-ary modulation
Note: M =2 b
Note here that a new b-bit coded sequence enters the
modulator every b/R seconds
If the channel bit rate is fixed at R, the amount of time
available to transmit one of the M waveforms
(corresponding to the b-bit sequence) is b times the time
period in a system that uses binary modulation
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Introduction …
Communication Channel: Physical medium that is used
to send the signal from the transmitter to the receiver
Examples include
Wireless transmission- the atmosphere or free space
Wireline, optical fiber, coaxial cables
Storage channels: Information storage and retrieval devices-
magnetic tapes, compact discs, etc
Transmitted signals are corrupted, in a random manner,
by a variety of additive noise such as thermal noise,
atmospheric noise, man made noise, etc and also
attenuated in amplitude
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Introduction …
Channels can be modeled in a variety of ways that take
into account the particular properties of the channel
Examples are additive noise channel, linear filter channel, etc
Digital demodulator
Processes the channel-corrupted transmitted waveforms and
reduces them to a sequence of numbers (digits)
The digits represent estimates of the transmitted coded data
symbols ( binary or M-ary)
Channel decoder
Attempts to reconstruct the original information sequence from
the knowledge of the code used and the redundancy contained
in the received data estimate.
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Introduction …
A measure of how accurately the demodulator and decoder
recover the original sequence is the average probability of
bit-error at the output of the decoder for a given power level
(signal-to-noise-ratio)
The probability of error is in general a function of
Code characteristics
Type of waveforms used
Transmitter power
Channel characteristics and
Method of demodulation and decoding
We will explore most of these factors that affect the
reliability of digital communication
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Factors for the Growth of Digital Communication
1. Impact of the Computer
Computers are processors and sources of data as well as tools
for communication
2. Flexibility and compatibility
The adoption of a common digital format makes it possible for a
transmission system to handle many different sources of
information in a flexible manner
3. Improved reliability due to improved theory,
microelectronics and system design
4. Availability of wide-band channels such as optical fibers,
coaxial cables and geo-stationary satellites
5. Availability of integrated solid-state electronics
technology makes possible increased system complexity
by orders of magnitude in a cost effective manner
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