Chapter 3

Introduction to Digital Communication

Introduction

Basic elements of a digital communication system

3
Introduction
 The figure illustrates a functional block diagram of a
typical digital communication system showing the key
components of the system.
 We will briefly review and discuss the functions of these
key elements of the communication system.
 Source Output: The output from an information source
could be an analog signal such as voice or video signal
or digital signal that is discrete in time and having a
finite number of characters.
 Messages from the source are converted into a
sequence of binary digits. Ideally, the source message
should be represented by as few as possible binary
digits.

4
Introduction
 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)
 Channel Encoding: Introduce, in a controlled manner,
some redundancy in the binary information sequence.
The redundancy can be 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

5
Introduction
• 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)
 Digital Modulator: This is 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  s0 (t )   cos 2ft
1  s1 (t )   cos 2ft

6
Introduction
 This is an example of binary modulation in which
each bit from the encoder is transmitted separately,
called Binary Phase-Shift Keying – BPSK.
 Alternatively, modulator may transmit b coded
information bits at a time using distinct waveforms
si(t), i= 0,1,2…..M-1,called M-ary modulation.

7
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
 Wire line, 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.
 Channels can be modeled in a variety of ways that take into
account the particular properties of the channel

8
Introduction
 Digital Demodulator: The demodulator processes the
channel-corrupted transmitted waveforms and reduces
them to a sequence of numbers (digits) that represent
estimates of the transmitted coded data symbols ( binary
or M-ary)
 The 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.
 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)

9
Introduction

 The probability of error is in general a function of the code

characteristics, the type of waveforms used, the transmitter
power, the channel characteristics and the method of
demodulation and decoding.

10
Introduction
Major Factors that help the growth of Digital
Communication
1. Impact of the Computer: Computers are
processors and sources of data as well as tools for
communication.
2. Digital communication offers 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.

11
Introduction
4. Availability of wide-band channels such as optical
fibers, coaxial cables and geo-stationary satellites.
5. Digital signals are more immune to channel noise
by using channel coding (perfect decoding is
possible!)
6. Repeaters along the transmission path can detect
a digital signal and retransmit a new noise-free
signal

12
Introduction
Different goals between analog and digital
communication systems:
 Analog communication systems: to reproduce the
transmitted waveform accurately.
 Use signal to noise ratio to assess the quality of the
system
 Digital communication systems: the transmitted
symbol to be identified correctly by the receiver
 Use the probability of error of the receiver to assess
the quality of the system

13
Overview
 Introduction
 Digital representation of signals
 Baseband digital transmission
 Digital modulation
 Coherent demodulation

14
Digital representation of signals
 Sampling
 Quantization
 Encoding

15
Pulse-Coded Modulation (PCM)

 Sample the message signal above the Nyquist

frequency
 Quantize the amplitude of each sample
 Encode the discrete amplitudes into a binary
codeword
 Note: PCM isn’t modulation in the usual sense; it’s a
type of Analog-to-Digital Conversion.

16
The PCM Process

17
Overview
 Introduction
 Digital representation of signals
 Baseband digital transmission
 Digital modulation
 Coherent demodulation

18
Line Coding
 The bits of PCM, DPCM etc need to be converted into
some electrical signals.
 Line coding encodes the bit stream for transmission
through a line, or a cable.
 Line coding was used former to the wide spread
application of channel coding and modulation
techniques.
 Nowadays, it is used for communications between
the CPU and peripherals, and for short-distance
baseband communications, such as the Ethernet.

19
Line Coding

20
Model of Binary Baseband Communication System

 We only consider binary PCM with on-off signaling:

0 → 0 and 1→ A with bit duration Tb.
 Assume:
 AWGN channel: The channel noise is additive white
Gaussian, with a double-sided PSD of N0/2.
 The LPF is an ideal filter with unit gain on [−W, W ].
 The signal passes through the LPF without distortion
(approximately).

21
Distribution of Noise
 Effect of additive noise on digital transmission: at the
receiver, symbol 1 may be mistaken for 0, and vice versa.
 bit errors
 What is the probability of such an error?
 After the LPF, the pre detection signal is
y(t) = s(t) + n(t)
 s(t): the binary-valued function (either 0 or A volts)
 n(t): additive white Gaussian noise with zero mean and
variance

 Reminder: A sample value N of n(t) is a Gaussian random

variable from drawn a probability density function (the
normal distribution):

22
Decision

23
Errors
 Two cases of decision error:
 (i) a symbol 0 was transmitted, but a symbol 1 was chosen
 (ii) a symbol 1 was transmitted, but a symbol 0 was chosen

24
Case (i)
 Probability of (i) occurring = (Probability of an error,
given symbol 0 was transmitted) × (Probability of a 0
to be transmitted in the first place):
p(i) = Pe0 × p0
 where:
 p0: the a priori probability of transmitting a symbol
0
 Pe0: the conditional probability of error, given that
symbol 0 was transmitted:

25
Case (ii)
 Probability of (ii) occurring = (Probability of an error,
given symbol 1 was transmitted) × (Probability of a 1
to be transmitted in the first place):
p(ii) = Pe1 × p1
 where:
 p1: the a priori probability of transmitting a symbol
1
 Pe1: the conditional probability of error, given that
symbol 0 was transmitted:

26
Total Error Probability
 Total error probability:

 Choose T so that Pe(T) is minimum:

27
Optimum Threshold
 Equi-probable symbols (p1 = p0 = 1 − p1) →T = A/2.
 For equi-probable symbols, it can be shown that Pe0
=Pe1.
 Probability of total error:
 pe =p(i) + p(ii) =p0 pe0 + p1pe1 = pe0 = pe1
 since p0 = p1 = 1/2, and Pe0 = Pe1.
 Calculation of Pe

 Where:

28
Probability of Bit error

29
Overview
 Introduction
 Digital representation of signals
 Baseband digital transmission
 Digital modulation
 Coherent demodulation

30
Digital modulation
 Three Basic Forms of Signaling Binary Information

31
Demodulation

 Coherent (synchronous) demodulation/detection

 Use a BPF to reject out-of-band noise
 Multiply the incoming waveform with a cosine of the carrier
frequency
 Use a LPF
 Requires carrier regeneration (both frequency and phase
synchronization by using a phase-lock loop)
 Non cohérent démodulation (envelope détection etc.)
 Makes no explicit efforts to estimate the phase

32
ASK
 Amplitude shift keying (ASK) = on-off keying (OOK)

 Coherent detection

 Assume an ideal band-pass filter with unit gain on

[fc−W, fc+W]. For a practical band-pass filter, 2W
should be interpreted as the equivalent bandwidth.

33
Coherent Demodulation
 Pre-detection signal:

 After multiplication with 2cos(2πfct):

 After low-pass filtering:

34
Bit Error Rate
 Reminder: The in-phase noise component nc(t) has the same
variance as the original band-pass noise n(t)
 The received signal is identical to that for baseband digital transmission
 The sample values of will have PDFs that are identical to those of the
baseband case
 For ASK the statistics receiver signal are identical to those of a
baseband system
 The probability of error for ASK is the same as for the baseband
case
 Assume equiprobable transmission of 0s and 1s.
 Then the decision threshold must be A/2 and the probability of
error is given by:

35
PSK
 Phase shift keying (PSK)

 Use coherent detection again, to eventually get the detection

signal:

 Probability density functions for PSK for equi probable 0s and 1s

in noise (use threshold 0 for detection):
 (a): symbol 0 transmitted
 (b): symbol 1 transmitted

36
Analysis
 Conditional error probabilities:

 In the first set

 In the second set

37
Bit Error Rate

38
FSK
 Frequency Shift Keying (FSK)

 Symbol recovery:
 Use two sets of coherent detectors, one operating at a
frequency f0 and the other at f1.

39
Output
 Each branch = an ASK detector

 n0(t): the noise output of the top branch

 n1(t): the noise output of the bottom branch
 Each of these noise terms has identical statistics
to nc(t).
 Output if a symbol 1 were transmitted

 Output if a symbol 0 were transmitted

40
Bit Error Rate for FSK
 Set detection threshold to 0
 Difference from PSK: the noise term is now n1(t)−n0(t)
 The noises in the two channels are independent
because their spectra are non-overlapping.
 the variances add.
 the noise variance has doubled!

41
The Sum of Two R.V.

42
Comparison of Three Schemes

43
Comment
 To achieve the same error probability (fixed Pe):
 PSK can be reduced by 6 dB compared with a
baseband or ASK system (a factor of 2 reduction in
amplitude)
 FSK can be reduced by 3 dB compared with a
baseband or ASK (a factor of 2 reduction in
amplitude)

44
Q-function

45
Examples

46