Introduction to Electronics Engineering BESCK104C

ANALOG COMMUNICATION SCHEMES:

MODERN COMMUNICATION SYSYTEM:

Communication engineering deals with the techniques of transmitting information.

Communication engineering means electrical communication, in which information is transmitted
through electrical signals.

Electrical communication is a process by which the information message is transmitted from one
point to another, from one person to another, or from one place to another in the form of electrical
signals, through some communication link.
Basic communication system provides a link between the information source and its destination.
The process of electrical communication involves sending, receiving, and processing information
in electrical form.
The information to be transmitted passes through a number of stages of the communication system
prior it reaches its destination.

Fig 5.1 Schematic diagram of the most general form of basic communication system

The main constituents of basic communication system are:

(i) Information source and input transducer
(ii) Transmitter
(iii) Channel or medium
(iv) Noise
(v) Receiver
(vi) Output transducer and final destination.

(i) Information source:

• A communication system transmits information from an information source to a
destination and hence the first stage of a communication system is the information source.

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• Ex: A sentence or paragraph spoken by a person is a message that contains some

information. The person, in this case, acts as information source. Few other familiar
examples of messages are voice, live scenes, music, written text, and e-mail.
• A communication system transmits information in the form of electrical signal or signals.
(i) Input transducer:
• A transducer is a device that converts a non-electrical energy into its corresponding
electrical energy called signal and vice versa, e.g., during a telephone conversation, the
words spoken by a person are in the form of sound energy.

• An example of a transducer is a microphone. Microphone converts sound signals into the

corresponding electrical signals.

• Similarly, a television (TV) picture tube converts electrical signals into its corresponding
pictures. Some other examples of transducers are movie cameras, Video Cassette,
Recorder (VCR) heads, tape recorder heads, and loudspeakers.
• The information produced by the information source is applied to the next stage, termed
the information or input /transducer. This in turn, produces an electrical signal
corresponding to the information as output. This electrical signal is called the baseband
signal. It is also called a message signal s(t).
• There are two types of signals. (a) analog signal, and (b) digital signal.
(a) Analog Signal
• An analog signal is a function of time, and has a continuous range of values. However,
there is a definite function value of the analog signal at each point of time.

• A familiar example of analog signal or analog wave form is a pure sine wave form. A
practical example of an analog signal is a voice signal. When a voice signal is converted
to electrical for by a microphone, one gets a corresponding electrical analog signal.

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Fig 5.2: Analog signals (a) Pure sine wave (b) Typical speech signal
(b) Digital signal
• A digital signal does not have continuous function values on a time scale. It is discrete in
nature, i.e., it has some values at discrete timings.
• A familiar example of a digital signal is the sound signal produced by drumbeats.

Fig 5.3: Digital signal

• Digital signals in their true sense correspond to a binary digital signal, where the discrete
amplitude of the signal is coded into binary digits represented by ‘0’ and ‘1’.
• The analog signal, which is continuous in time, is converted to discrete time, using a
procedure calling sampling. The continuous amplitude of the analog signal is converted to

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discrete amplitude using a process called quantization. Sampling and quantization are
together termed as analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) and the circuitry that performs this
operation is called an analog to-digital converter.

(ii) Transmitter:
The transmitter section processes the signal prior transmission. There are two following
options for processing signals prior transmission:
(i) The baseband signal, which lies in the low frequency spectrum, is translated to a
higher frequency spectrum.
(ii) The baseband signal is transmitted without translating it to a higher frequency
spectrum.
The baseband signal is converted into a corresponding series of sine waves of two different
frequencies prior to transmission. Figure 4.4 illustrates this processing.
The carrier communication system is based on the principle of translating a low
frequency baseband signal to higher frequency spectrum. This process is termed as
modulation.
If the baseband signal is a digital signal, the carrier communication system is called a
digital communication system. The digital modulation methods are employed for this.
If the baseband signal is an analog signal, the carrier communication system is called as
an analog communication system and for processing the analog modulation techniques
are used.

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Fig: 5.4 The processing of a baseband signal

Fig 5.5 Block diagram representing schematic of analog transmitter section

Fig 5.5 shows the baseband signal, s(t) applied to the modulated stage. This stage translates the
baseband signal from its low frequency spectrum to high frequency spectrum. This stage also
receives another input called the carrier signal, c(t), which is generated by a high frequency carrier
oscillator.
Modulation takes place at this stage with the baseband and the carrier signals as two inputs after
modulation, the baseband signal is translated to a high frequency spectrum and the carrier signal
is said to be modulated by the baseband signal.
The output of the modulated stage is called the modulated signal, and is designated as x(t). The
voltage of the modulated signal is then amplified to drive the last stage of the transmitter, called
the power amplifier stage .

This stage amplifies the power of the modulated signal and thus it carries enough power to reach
the receiver stage of the communication system. Finally, the signal is passed to the transmission
medium or channel.
Radio signals are transmitted through electromagnetic (em) waves, also referred as radio waves,
in a radio communication system.
The radio waves have a wide frequency range starting from a few ten kilo Hertz (Hz) to several
thousand Mega Hertz (MHz). This wide range of frequencies is referred as the radio frequency
(RF) spectrum.

(iii) Channel or Medium:

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After the required processing, the transmitter section passes the signal to the transmission medium.
The signal propagates through the transmission medium and is received at the other side by the
receiver section. The transmission medium between the transmitter and the receiver is called a
channel.
Channel is a very important part of a communication system as its characteristics add many
constraints to the design of the communication system, e.g., most of the noise is added to the signal
during its transmission through the channel.
Depending on the physical implementations, one can classify the channels in the following two
groups:

Hardware Channels:
These channels are manmade structure which can be used as transmission medium. There are
following three possible implementations of the hardware channels.
1. Transmission lines
2. Waveguides
3. Optical Fiber Cables (OFC)
• The examples of transmission lines are Twisted-pair cables used in landline telephony and
coaxial cables used for cable TV transmission. However, transmission lines are not suitable for
ultra-high frequency (UHF) transmission.
• To transmit signals at UHF range, Waveguides are employed as medium. Waveguides are
hollow, circular, or rectangular metallic structures. The signals enter the waveguide, are reflected
at the metallic walls, and propagate towards the other end of the waveguide.
• Optical fiber cables are highly sophisticated transmission media, in the form of extremely
thin circular pipes. e.g., landline telephony and cable TV network.

Software Channels:
There are certain natural resources which can be used as the transmission medium for signals.

Such transmission media are called software channels.

• The possible natural resources that can be used as software channels are: air or open space
and sea water.
• The most widely used software channel is air or open space. The signals are transmitted in
the form of electromagnetic (em) waves, also called radio waves.
• Systems that use radio waves to transmit signals through open space are called radio
communication systems, e.g., radio broad cast, television transmission, satellite communication,
and cellular mobile communication.

(iv) Noise:

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• • In electronics and communication engineering, noise is defined as unwanted electrical

energy of random and unpredictable nature present in the system due to any cause.

• • Obviously, noise is an electrical disturbance, which does not contain any useful
information. Thus, noise is a highly undesirable part of a communication system, and have to be
minimized.

SNR and Noise Figure (F):

• • One can define the SNR as the ratio of the signal power to the noise power at a point in
the circuit. Now, if Ps, is signal power and Pn, is noise power, then SNR expressed as S/N, is given
as
𝑆 𝑃𝑠
=
𝑁 𝑃𝑛
where Vs, is signal voltage and Vn, is noise voltage.

If Ps = Vs2R and Pn = Vn2R, then

In addition, it is assumed that both the signal and noise powers are dissipated in the same resistor
R. Therefore, SNR can be expressed in terms of decibels (dB) as

For example, if, at a particular point in a circuit, the signal and noise voltages are given as 3.5 mV
and 0.75 mV, respectively, SNR in dB is calculated as:

Clearly, the SNR of the circuit at the point is 13.38 dB.

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• The Noise figure (F) is the measure of the noise introduced by the circuit. It is defined as
the ratio of the signal-to-noise power at the input of the circuit and the signal-to-noise
power at the output of the circuit. Noise figure (r) can be expressed as

Receiver:
• The task of the receiver is to provide the original information to the user. This information
is altered due to the processing at the transmitter side.
• The signal received by the receiver, thus does not contain information in its original form.
The receiver system receives the transmitted signal and performs some processing on it to
the original baseband signal.
• The function of the receiver section is to separate the noise from the received signal, and
then recover the original baseband signal by performing some processing on it.
• The receiver performs an operation known as demodulation, which brings the baseband
signal from the higher frequency spectrum to its original low-frequency spectrum. The
demodulation process removes the high frequency carrier from the received signal and
retrieves the original baseband.

Fig.5.6: Block Diagram of receiver Station

From Fig. 5.6 it is evident that the received signal, r(t), is first amplified by the front-end voltage
amplifier. This is done to strengthen the received signal, which is weak and to facilitate easy
processing. Next, this signal is given to the demodulator, which in turn, demodulates the received
signal to recover the original baseband signal. After recovering the original baseband signal, its
voltage and power is amplified prior it to final destination block.

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MULTIPLEXING
This is a technique that is most widely used in nearly all types of communication systems, radio
and line communication systems.
Basically, multiplexing is a process which allows more than one signal to transmit through a single
channel.
The use of multiplexing also makes the communication system economical because more than one
signal can be transmitted through a single channel.
Multiplexing is possible in communication system only through modulation.
To consider multiplexing, let us consider the following example. If many people speak loudly and
simultaneously, then it becomes nearly impossible to understand their conversion because the
overall result is noise. This noise is the result of mixing of all the speeches. The human ear is not
capable of separating these intermingled speeches and therefore no intelligent words are
communicated to brain. The same situation is now applied to the transmission of audio signals.
These audio signals may come from, say ten different persons. While the speech frequency of
different persons will be different, all the ten signals will lie in the same audio range of 20 Hz to
20 kHz.
TYPES OF COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS
One may categorize communication systems based on:
The physical infrastructure pertains to the type of the channel used and the hardware design of the
transmitting and receiving equipment.
The signal specifications signify the nature and type of the transmitted signal

Types of Communication System

Fig 5.7 Types of Communication System

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MODULATION
Modulation is the process of changing the parameters of the carrier signal, in accordance with the
instantaneous values of the modulating signal.

TYPES OF MODULATION:
 Continuous-wave Modulation
• Amplitude Modulation
• Frequency Modulation
• Phase Modulation

Amplitude modulation (AM)

• AM is defined as the modulation technique in which the instantaneous amplitude of the carrier
signal is varied in accordance with the instantaneous amplitude of the analog modulating signal
to be transmitted while the frequency and the phase of the carrier signal remain unchanged.
• Figure 5.8 shows the high frequency carrier signal, modulating signal and the modulated signal.

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Fig 5.8 Waveforms of Amplitude Modulation

It can be clearly seen from the Fig 5.8 that the modulating signal seems to be superimposed on the
carrier signal. The amplitude variations in the peak values of the carrier signal exactly replicate the
modulating signal at different points in time which is known as an envelope.

2. Frequency Modulation:
A modulating signal may vary the frequency of the carrier keeping the amplitude and phase
constant. This type of modulation is called Frequency modulation. Broadly speaking, the frequency
modulation is the process of changing the frequency of the carrier voltage in accordance with the
instantaneous value of the modulating voltage.
The original frequency of the carrier signal is called Centre or resting frequency and denoted by
fc. The amount by which the frequency of the carrier wave changes or shifts above or below the
resting frequency is termed as frequency deviation (Δf). This means Δf ∝ m(t).
The total variation is frequency of F.M. wave from the lowest to the highest is termed as carrier
swing (CS), i.e., US = 2 x frequency deviation in Centre frequency or CS=2 Δf.
Modulation index in F.M. is the ratio of frequency deviation to the modulating frequency,
𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑦 𝑑𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛

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Fig: 5.9 Waveforms of Frequency modulation

Phase modulation(PM):

PM is another form of angle modulation. Phase modulation is the process in which the
instantaneous phase of the carrier signal is varied in accordance with the instantaneous
amplitude of the modulating signal.

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In this type of modulation, the amplitude and frequency of the

carrier signal remains unaltered after pulse modulation

Radio wave propagation (Ground, space, sky):

In space communication electromagnetic waves of different frequencies are used to carry
information through the physical space acting as the transmission medium. Electromagnetic waves
with frequencies extending from about 10 kHz to 300 GHz are classed as radio waves.

Depending primarily on the frequency a radio wave travels from the transmitting to the receiving
antenna in several ways. On the basis of the mode of propagation, radio waves can be broadly
classified as:
(a) ground or surface wave. (b) space or tropospheric wave. (c) sky way.

(a). Ground wave propagation:

In ground wave propagation, radio waves are guided by the earth and move along its curved
surface from the transmitter to the receiver.

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As the waves moves over the ground, they are strongly influenced by the electrical properties of
the ground. As high frequency waves are strongly absorbed by ground; ground wave propagation
is useful only at low frequencies.
Below 500 kHz, ground waves can be used for communication within distances of about 1500 km
from the transmitter.
AM radio broadcast in the medium frequency band cover local areas and take place primarily by
the ground wave. Ground wave transmission is very reliable whatever the atmospheric conditions
be.

(b). Space or tropospheric wave propagation:

When a radio wave transmitted from an antenna, travelling in a straight line directly reaches the
receiving antenna, it is termed as space or tropospheric wave.
In space wave or line of sight propagation, radio waves move in the earth's troposphere within
about 15 km over the surface of the earth.
The space wave is made up of two components:
(a) a direct or line-of- sight MGVE form the transmitting to the receiving antenna.
(b) the ground-reflected urine traversing forms the transmitting antenna to ground and reflected to
the receiving antenna.
Television frequencies in the range 100-220 MHz are transmitted through this mode.

(c). Sky wave propagation:

In this mode of propagation, radio waves transmitted from the transmitting antenna reach the
receiving antenna after reflection form the ionosphere, i.e., the ionized layers lying in the earth's
upper atmosphere.
Short wave transmission around the globe is possible through sky wave via successive reflections
at the ionosphere and the earth's surface.

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•
Fig 5.10: Mode of Propagation

Digital Modulation Schemes:

Advantages of digital communication over analog communication

• Immunity to Noise (possibility of regenerating the original digital signal if

signal power to noise power ratio (SNR) is relatively high by using of
devices called repeaters along the path of transmission).
• Efficient use of communication bandwidth (through use of techniques like
compression).
• Digital communication provides higher security (data encryption) The
ability to detect errors and correct them if necessary.
• Design and manufacturing of electronics for digital communication systems
is much easier and much cheaper than the design and manufacturing of
electronics for analog communication systems.

• In digital communications, the modulating signal consists of binary data.

When it is required to transmit digital signals on a band pass channel, the
amplitude, frequency or phase of the sinusoidal carrier is varied in
accordance with the incoming digital data.

• Since, the digital data is in discrete steps, the modulation of the band pass
sinusoidal carrier is also done in discrete steps. Due to this reason, this type
of modulation is known as digital modulation.

• Digital modulation schemes as classified as under:

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• Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK)

• Frequency Shift Keying (FSK)

• Phase Shift Keying (PSK)

Because of constant amplitude of FSK or PSK, the effect of non-linearities, noise interference is
minimum on signal detection. However, these effects are more pronounced on ASK. Therefore,
FSK and PSK are preferred over ASK.
Coherent digital modulation techniques are those techniques which employ coherent detection. In
coherent detection, the local carrier generated at the receiver is phase locked with the carrier at the
transmitter. Thus, the detection is done by correlating the received noisy signal and locally
generated carrier. The coherent detection is also called synchronous detection.
Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK):

• ASK signal may be generated by simply applying the incoming binary data and the
sinusoidal carrier to the two inputs of a product modulator.
• ASK represents digital data as variations in the amplitude of a carrier wave
• The demodulation of binary ASK waveform can be achieved with the help of coherent
detector.
Frequency Shift Keying (FSK):

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• Digital signal is transmitted by switching between low frequency and high

frequency in order to represent 0’s and 1’s. The simplest FSK is Binary FSK
(BFSK).
• It uses a pair of discrete frequencies to transmit binary (0s and 1s)
information.
Phase Shift Keying (PSK):

• The carrier Phase is shifted between two different phases (typically 00 to

1800 ) depending on whether 0-bit or 1-bit is being transmitted.
• The simplest form of PSK is Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK).

Radio Signal Transmission

Fig 5.11 shows the architecture of a wireless communication transmitter. In the figure, the
transmitter usually processes the information in two stages. In the first stage, a modulator accepts
the incoming bits, and computes symbols that represent the amplitude and phase of the outgoing
wave. It then passes these to the analogue transmitter, which generates the radio wave itself.
The modulation scheme used in Fig. 5.11 is known as quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK).
A QPSK modulator takes the incoming bits two at a time and transmits them using a radio wave
that can have four different states. These have phases of 45°, 135°, 225° and 315°.

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Fig 5.11: Architecture of a wireless communication transmitter

5.12: Quadrature phase shift keying (a) Example QPSK waveform (b) QPSK constellation diagram

Fig. 5.12 (a), which correspond to bit combinations of 00, 10, 11 and 01 respectively. We can represent
the four states of QPSK using the constellation diagram shown in Fig. 5.12 (b).
In this diagram, the distance of each state from the origin represents the amplitude of the transmitted
wave, while the angle (measured anti-clockwise from the x-axis) represents its phase. Usually, it is
more convenient to represent each symbol using two other numbers, which are known as the in-phase
(I) and quadrature (Q) components. These are computed as follows:
I = a cos ɸ
Q = a sin ɸ
where a is the amplitude of the transmitted wave and ɸ is its phase.
Mathematicians will recognize the in-phase and quadrature components as the real and imaginary parts
of a complex number.
As shown in Fig. 5.13, LTE uses four modulation schemes altogether. Binary phase shift keying
(BPSK) sends bits one at a time, using two states that can be interpreted as starting phases of 0° and
180°, or as signal amplitudes of +1 and -1.

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LTE uses this scheme for a limited number of control streams, but does not use it for normal data
transmissions.
16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) sends bits four at a time, using 16 states that have
different amplitudes and phases.
Similarly, 64-QAM sends bits six at a time using 64 different states, so it has a data rate six times
greater than that of BPSK.

Fig 5.13: Modulation schemes used by LTE

Multiple Access Techniques:

The techniques described so far work well for one-to-one communications. In a cellular
network, however, a base station has to transmit to many different mobiles at once. It does this by
sharing the resources of the air interface, in a technique known as multiple access.
Mobile communication systems use a new different multiple access techniques, two of which are shown
in Fig. 5.14 frequency division multiple access (FDMA) was used by the first-generation analogue
systems. In this technique, each mobile receives on its own carrier frequency, which it distinguishes
from the others by the use of analogue filters.
In time division multiple access (TDMA), mobiles receive information on the same carrier frequency
but at different times.
GSM uses a mix of frequency and time division multiple access, in which every cell has several carrier
frequencies that are each shared amongst eight different mobiles.
LTE uses another mixed technique known as orthogonal frequency division multiple access
(OFDMA).

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Fig 5.14: Example multiple access techniques

Third generation communication systems used a different technique altogether, known as code
division multiple access (CDMA).
In this technique, mobiles receive on the same carrier frequency and at the same time, but the
signals are labelled by the use of codes, which allow a mobile to separate its own signal from those
of the others.
LTE uses a few of the concepts from CDMA for some of its control signals, but does not implement
the technique otherwise. Multiple access is actually a generalization of a simpler technique known
as multiplexing.

FDD and TDD Modes

A mobile communication system can operate in the transmission modes as shown in Fig. 5.15.
When using frequency division duplex (FDD), the base station and mobile transmit and receive at
the same time, but using different carrier frequencies.
Using time division duplex (TDD), they transmit and receive on the same carrier frequency but at
different times. FDD and TDD modes have different advantages and disadvantages.
In FDD mode, the bandwidths of the uplink and downlink are fixed and are usually the same. This
makes it suitable for voice communications, in which the uplink and downlink data rates are very
similar.
In TDD mode, the system can adjust how much time is allocated to the uplink and downlink. This
makes it suitable for applications such as web browsing.
TDD mode can be badly affected by interference if, for example, one base station is transmitting
while a nearby base station is receiving.
To avoid this, nearby base stations must be carefully time synchronized and must use the same
allocations for the uplink and downlink, so that they all transmit and receive at the same time.
This makes TDD suitable for networks that are made from isolated hotspots, because each hotspot
can have a different timing and resource allocation. In contrast, FDD is often preferred for wide-
area networks that have no isolated regions.

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When operating in FDD mode, the mobile usually has to contain a high attenuation duplex filter
that isolates the uplink transmitter from the downlink receiver.
LTE supports each of the modes described above. A cell can use either FDD or TDD mode.

Fig 5.15: Operation of FDD and TDD modes

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