Signal Encoding Techniques

Data
 Data can be analog or Analog Data Digital Data
digital
Information that is Information that has
 To be transmitted, data continuous discrete states
must be transformed to be
electromagnetic signals

Note
Data and signal are completely different things. Data is raw data, or
unprocessed data; Signal, is used to transfer data from one point to another
Signal
 Signals can be analog or Analog Signal Digital Signal
digital
Infinitely many levels of Can have only a limited
intensity over a period of number of defined values
time
Encode vs Decode
Encoding Decoding
Process of converting the data or a given The reverse process of encoding which is to
sequence of characters, symbols, alphabets etc., extract the information from the converted
into a specified format for efficient and secure format.
transmission of data.
• Another term for compression • Reverse process of encoding and
• Reduce the size of the file, making it decompresses the content
easier to transmit over a distance

Modulation
A process of converting data into radio waves: tuning or adjusting to certain
measure or proportion
Encoding/Modulation Evaluation Factors
• Signal Spectrum • Error detection
 Lack of high frequencies  Can be built into signal
reduces required bandwidth encoding
 Lack of dc component is • Signal interference and noise
desirable, i.e. it should be immunity
avoided  Some codes are better than
 Concentrate power in the others
middle of the bandwidth • Cost and complexity
• Clocking, i.e. synchronizing  Higher signal rate (& thus
transmitter and receiver data rate) lead to higher costs
 External clock  Some codes require signal
 Sync mechanism based on rate greater than data rate
signal
Encoding and Modulation Techniques
 Encoding and Modulation
• Techniques
 Digital data → Digital signal
 Digital data → Analog signal
 Analog data → Digital signal
 Analog data → Analog signal
• Interpreting signals at receiver needs to know
 Timing of bits – when the start and end
 Signal levels
• Factors affecting successful interpreting of incoming signals:
 Signals to noise ration: increased SNR, decrease error rate
 Date rate: increase data rate, increase error rate
 Bandwidth: increase bandwidth allow increasing data rate
 Encoding scheme
Digital data, Digital signal
• Nonreturn to Zero (NRZ)
• Nonreturn to Zero-Level (NRZ-L)
• Nonreturn to Zero Inverted (NRZI)
• Multilevel Binary
• Bipolar-AMI
• Pseudoternary
• Biphase
• Manchester
• Differential Manchester
• Scrambling techniques
• B8ZS
• HDB3
 Digital Data, Analog Signals
• Transmit digital data over media that only support analog
signal e.g. telephone network, microwave systems
• Telephone network designed to transmit signals in voice-frequency (300 to
3400 Hz)
• Modems (modulator-demodulator) convert digital data to signals in this
frequency range
• 3 basic modulation techniques:
• Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK)
• Frequency Shift Keying (FSK)
• Phase Shift Keying (PSK)
• Resulting signal occupied bandwidth centered on carrier frequency
Modulation of Digital Data, Analog Signals

Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK)

Frequency Shift Keying (FSK)

Phase Shift Keying (PSK)

Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK)
• Simplest way to indicate two • Advantages
possible states • Extremely simple to understand
• Switching a wave on or off and implement
• Disadvantages
• Very prone to noise and
uncertainties
Frequency Shift Keying (FSK)
• Use different frequencies to • More values can be represented
represent different values by using more frequencies
• More complex variants use
mixtures of multiple sine waves
to represent more information
• Notable examples (which do this
with audio)
• DTMF (aka touch tones phone
keypad)
Phase Shift Keying (PSK)
• Digital information encoded in • One challenge: Phase can only
the phase of the wave be determined relative to a
• Look at the changes in phase reference signal
instead of the absolute phase
Differential PSK
Multilevel PSK
• Multilevel PSK
• Can use more phase angles and have more than one amplitude
• 9600bps modem use 12 angles, four of which have two amplitudes, for total
of 16 different signaling elements
• Quadrature Amplitude Modulation: QAM = ASK + PSK
• QAM is used in ADSL (High speed transmission)
Example

f 00
2f 01
3f 10
4f 11
Question 1

How binary value “1101001” is

represented in Amplitude Shift Keying
(ASK), Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) and
Phase Shift Keying (PSK) ?
Question 1 : 1101001
1 1 0 1 0 0 1
Question 1 : 1101001 (ASK)
1 1 0 1 0 0 1
Question 1 : 1101001 (PSK)
1 1 0 1 0 0 1
QAM = ASK + PSK
A = 1; P = 0 00
A = 1; P = 𝜋 01
A = 2; P = 0 10
A = 2; P = 𝜋 11
1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1
Shift Keying Schemes
ASK FSK PSK
• Values representation by different • Most common form of is binary FSK • Phase of carrier signal is shifted to
amplitude of carrier (BFSK) represent data
• Usually, one amplitude is zero • Two binary values represented by • Two-level (Binary) PSK
• i.e. presence and absence of two different frequencies • Two phases represent two
carrier is used • Less susceptible to error than ASK binary digits
• Susceptible to sudden gain changes • Multi FSK: more than two • Four-level (Quadrature) PSK – QPSK
• Relatively inefficient over copper frequencies used • More efficient use by each
lines • Each signaling element signal element representing
• But efficiently used over optical represents more than one bit more than one bit
fiber • More bandwidth efficient • e.g. Shifts of 𝜋/2 (90o) and
• But more prone to error each element represents two
bits
• In the presence of noise, bit error
rate of PSK and QPSK are about 3dB
superior to ASK and FSK
Technologies: Optical fiber, RFID Technologies: HF/shortwave radio, Technologies: Mobile phones, Wi-Fi,
UHF/VHF radio communications, RFID cable modems, xDSL, DVB
Analog Data, Digital Signals
• Digitizing of analog data (e.g. voice) is conversion of analog
data into digital data which can then be transmitted using
some digital encoding (codec) or analog modulation.
• Pulse Code Modulation – PCM used for voice encoding
• PCM is based on “Sampling Theorem”:
• If a signal is sampled at regular intervals at a rate higher than twice the highest
signal frequency, the samples contain all the information of the original signal
• Those are analog samples (Pulse Amplitude Modulation, PAM)
• Each sample is then assigned digital value by rounding or truncation
• Quantizing error or noise introduced
• Approximations mean it is impossible to recover original exactly
PCM Applications
• Voice over telephone lines:
• Voice data limited to below 4000Hz, thus it require 8000 sample per second
• 128 levels considered sufficient  7 bit per sample
• 8000 x 7 = 56kbps for PCM over telephone lines
• CD - quality audio:
• Standard sampling rate: 44.1k samples per second, since music is limited to
about 20kHz
• 16 bits per sample (i.e. 216 = 64*1024 levels) used in an attempt to minimize
the effect of quantization noise
• the stereophonic music requires 2 separate channel
• Total bit rate = 2 × 16 × 44.1 × 103 = 1.411Mbps
• Capacity for 1 hour = 1.411 × 106 × 3600 sec = 5079.6Mbits = 634.95Mbytes
• CD disc capacity: about 750Mbytes
 DVD and High Quality Music
• What does DVD acronym stand for?
• Digital Video Disc or
• Digital Versatile Disc
• DVD disc capacity:
• Single side/single layer = 4.37Gbytes
• DVD–A (audio) characteristics (different from DVD–V (video))
• 6 channels (instead of 2 in stereo music))
• 24 bits per sample (instead of 16)
• 96k samples per sec (instead of 44.1k)
• Max bit rate = 6×24×96×103=13.824Mbps
• DVD specification limits max rate to 9.6Mbps
• MLP (Merdian Lossless Packing) compression used, where (uncompressed) PCM goes through
an additional step
• Super Audio CD (SACD): an alternative to DVD–A
• HD DVD and Blue Ray disk with capacity over 20 Gbytes
 Analog Data, Analog Signals
• Why modulate analog signals?
• Higher frequency can give more efficient transmission
• Permits frequency division multiplexing
• The basic encoding techniques are;
• AM (Amplitude modulation)
• FM (Frequency Modulation)
• PM (Phase Modulation)
Amplitude Modulation (AM)
• When amplitude of high
frequency carrier wave changed
in accordance with the intensity
of the signal.
• Only the amplitude of the carrier
wave is changed
Frequency Modulation (FM)
• The amplitude and the phase of
the carrier wave remains
constant.
• Only the frequency of the carrier
wave is changed in accordance
with signal.
 Encoding (Modulation) Techniques

Techniques
Analog data
Analog data → Analog
Analog data → Digital signal → Digital
signal
signal

ASK FSK PSK Pulse Code

(Amplitude (Frequency (Phase shift Modulation AM FM
shift keying) shift keying) keying) (PCM)
Spread Spectrum Technology
• Introduction to Spread Spectrum Communication
• Spread Spectrum Technologies
• FHSS
• DSSS
• FHSS vs DSSS
Introduction to Spread Spectrum
Communication
• Narrow Band Radio Signal
• Narrow band of frequency, i.e. 105.5MHz
• Require a lot of power
• Easy to intercept and interfere
• Spread Spectrums Radio Signal (Take the narrow band signal to
spread over a larger frequency range)
• Broad bandwidth
• Low power consumption
• More secure