TRANSMISSION LINES IN COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

PRINCIPLES OF COMMUNICATION
DEFINITION:

A transmission line may be defined as a device for transmitting or guiding energy from
one point to another. The energy may be for lighting, heating, or performing work, or it may be
in the form of signal information (speech, pictures, data, music).
Basically a transmission line has two terminals into which power (or information) is fed
and- two terminals from which power (or information) is received. Thus, a transmission line may
be regarded as a four-terminal device for connecting any and all electrical devices.
A transmission line consists of two or more parallel conductors used to connect a source
to a load. The source may be hydroelectric generator, transmitter or an oscillator. The load may
be a factory, an antenna or an oscilloscope.
The power cord on a lamp or appliance is a transmission line and so are the wires from a
generating station to a factory or home. Telephone and telegraph wires; audio, video, and radio
cables; and the myriad nerve fibers in our bodies are all transmission lines. The interconnections
of all electric circuits are transmission lines, and in a broad sense waveguides and optical fibers,
and even radio links maybe regarded as transmission lines. A few examples are shown in the
below figure.
TYPES OF TRANSMISSION MEDIUMS:

 Copper Wire
 Coaxial Cable (Coax)
 Free Space/Air
 Fiber Optic Cable
 Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW)

TWISTED PAIR WIRE

Twisted Pair is a transmission medium that uses two conductors that are twisted together
to form a pair. The concept for the twist of the conductors is to prevent interference. Ideally, each
conductor of the pair basically receives the same amount of interference, positive and negative,
effectively cancelling the effect of the interference. Typically, most inside cabling has four pairs
with each pair having a different twist rate. The different twist rates help to further reduce the
chance of crosstalk by making the pairs appear electrically different in reference to each other. If
the pairs all had the same twist rate, they would be electrically identical in reference to each
other causing crosstalk, which is also referred to as capacitive coupling. Twisted pair wire is
commonly used in telephone and data cables with variations of categories and twist rates.

COAXIAL CABLE
Coaxial cable (or simply, "coax") is a type of cable with a single data line, surrounded by
various layers of padding and shielding. The most common coax cable, common television cable,
has a layer of wire mesh surrounding the padded core, that absorbs a large amount of EM
interference, and helps to ensure a relatively clean signal is transmitted and received. Coax cable
has a much higher bandwidth than a twisted pair, but coax is also significantly more expensive
than an equal length of twisted pair wire. Coax cable frequently has an available bandwidth in
excess of hundreds of megahertz (in comparison with the hundreds of kilohertz available on
twisted pair wires).

FIBER OPTICS

Fiber Optic cables are thin strands of glass that carry pulses of light (frequently infrared
light) across long distances. Fiber Optic channels are usually immune to common RF
interference, and can transmit incredibly high amounts of data very quickly. There are 2 general
types of fiber optic cable: single frequency cable, and multi-frequency cable. single frequency
cable carries only a single frequency of laser light, and because of this there is no self-
interference on the line. Single-frequency fiber optic cables can attain incredible bandwidths of
many gigahertz. Multi-Frequency fiber optics cables allow a Frequency-Division Multiplexed
series of signals to each inhabit a given frequency range. However, interference between the
different signals can decrease the range over which reliable data can be transmitted.
Transmission Medium Limitations

 Frequency Response
 Crosstalk (Signal Leakage)
 Signal Ingress
 Bridge Tap Reflections
 Loading Coils
 Line Splice Attenuation
 Line Resistance Attenuation
 Group Delay (Dispersion)

Carrier Systems

 Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS)

 Digital Signal Level (DSx)
 Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN)
 Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)
 Optical Carrier (OCx)
 ISDN Digital Subscriber Line (IDSL)
 Integrated Digital Loop Carrier (IDLC)

Signaling

 In-Band Signaling
 Out-of-Band Signaling
FUNCTIONS:

Transmission lines are everywhere and are of infinite variety but regardless of type,
length, or construction, all operate according to the same basic principles.
Typical transmission lines include coaxial cable, a two-wire line, a parallel-plate or
planar line, a wire above the conducting plane and a micro strip line. Note that each of these lines
consist of two conductors in parallel.
Coaxial cables are routinely used in electrical laboratories. These are also used in
connecting TV sets to TV antennas.
Micro strip lines are particularly important in integrated circuits where metallic strips
connecting electronic elements are deposited on dielectric substrates.
It is convenient to classify transmission lines into three main groups:
(i) those with transverse electromagnetic (TEM) modes
(ii) those with higher-order modes and
(iii) those with transverse electromagnetic space waves (as in a radio link).

In a TEM mode both the electric and magnetic fields are entirely transverse to the
direction of propagation. There is no component of either E or H in the direction of transmission.
Higher-order modes, on the other hand, always have at least one field component in the direction
of transmission. All two-conductor lines such as coaxial or two-wire transmission lines are
examples of TEM-mode types, while hollow single-conductor waveguides or dielectric rods are
examples of higher mode types.

To summaries, transmission lines may be classified as follows:

(i) TEM-mode type: E and H entirely transverse. All two-conductor types, including coaxial
lines. Power flows along and between conductors.

(ii) Higher-mode type: E and H or both have components in the direction of transmission.
Hollow single-conductor waveguides, dielectric rods, and optical fibres. Power flows in space
inside hollow conductor waveguides or in or close to dielectric rod or fiber.

(iii) TEM space waves between antennas of a radio link. Power radiates through space.
Transmission line problems are usually solved using electromagnetic field theory and electric
circuit theory. These are the two major theories on which electrical engineering is based. The
discussion of these theories is beyond the scope of the present text.
Transmission modes
A given transmission on a communications channel between two machines can occur in several
different ways. The transmission is characterized by:

 the direction of the exchanges

 the transmission mode: the number of bits sent simultaneously
 synchronization between the transmitter and receiver

Simplex, half-duplex and full-duplex connections

There are 3 different transmission modes characterized according to the direction of the
exchanges:

 A simplex connection is a connection in which the data flows in only one direction, from
the transmitter to the receiver. This type of connection is useful if the data do not need to
flow in both directions (for example, from your computer to the printer or from the
mouse to your computer...).

 A half-duplex connection (sometimes called an alternating

connection or semi-duplex) is a connection in which the data flows in one direction or the
other, but not both at the same time. With this type of connection, each end of the
connection transmits in turn. This type of connection makes it possible to have
bidirectional communications using the full
capacity of the line.

 A full-duplex connection is a connection in which the data flow in both directions

simultaneously. Each end of the line can thus transmit and receive at the same time,
which means that the bandwidth is divided in two for each direction of data transmission
if the same transmission medium is used for both directions of transmission.
Serial and parallel transmission
The transmission mode refers to the number of elementary units of information (bits) that can
be simultaneously translated by the communications channel. In fact, processors (and therefore
computers in general) never process (in the case of recent processors) a single bit at a time;
generally they are able to process several (most of the time it is 8: one byte), and for this reason
the basic connections on a computer are parallel connections.
Parallel connection
Parallel connection means simultaneous transmission of N bits. These bits are sent
simultaneously over N different channels (a channel being, for example, a wire, a cable or any
other physical medium). The parallel connection on PC-type computers generally requires 10
wires.

These channels may be:

 N physical lines: in which case each bit is sent on a physical line (which is why parallel
cables are made up of several wires in a ribbon cable)
 one physical line divided into several sub-channels by dividing up the bandwidth. In this
case, each bit is sent at a different frequency...

Since the conductive wires are close to each other in the ribbon cable, interference can occur
(particularly at high speeds) and degrade the signal quality...
Serial connection
In a serial connection, the data are sent one bit at a time over the transmission channel. However,
since most processors process data in parallel, the transmitter needs to transform incoming
parallel data into serial data and the receiver needs to do the opposite.
These operations are performed by a communications controller (normally a UART (Universal
Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter) chip). The communications controller works in the
following manner:

 The parallel-serial transformation is performed using a shift register. The shift register,
working together with a clock, will shift the register (containing all of the data presented
in parallel) by one position to the left, and then transmit the most significant bit (the
leftmost one) and so on:

 The serial-parallel transformation is done in almost the same way using a shift register.
The shift register shifts the register by one position to the left each time a bit is received,
and then transmits the entire register in parallel when it is full:

Synchronous and asynchronous transmission

Given the problems that arise with a parallel-type connection, serial connections are normally
used. However, since a single wire transports the information, the problem is how to synchronise
the transmitter and receiver, in other words, the receiver can not necessarily distinguish the
characters (or more generally the bit sequences) because the bits are sent one after the other.
There are two types of transmission that address this problem:

 An asynchronous connection, in which each character is sent at irregular intervals in

time (for example a user sending characters entered at the keyboard in real time). So, for
example, imagine that a single bit is transmitted during a long period of silence... the
receiver will not be able to know if this is 00010000, 10000000 or 00000100...
To remedy this problem, each character is preceded by some information indicating the
start of character transmission (the transmission start information is called a START bit)
 and ends by sending end-of-transmission information (called STOP bit, there may even
be several STOP bits).
 In a synchronous connection, the transmitter and receiver are paced by the same clock.
The receiver continuously receives (even when no bits are transmitted) the information at
the same rate the transmitter sends it. This is why the transmitter and receiver are paced
at the same speed. In addition, supplementary information is inserted to guarantee that
there are no errors during transmission.

During synchronous transmission, the bits are sent successively with no separation between each
character, so it is necessary to insert synchronization elements; this is called character-level
synchronization.
The main disadvantage of synchronous transmission is recognizing the data at the receiver, as
there may be differences between the transmitter and receiver clocks. That is why each data
transmission must be sustained long enough for the receiver to distinguish it. As a result, the
transmission speed cannot be very high in a synchronous link.