Introduction to Mobile Computing: Part 3

Wireless Transmission Basics

CE-BE-MCC
Suvarna Chaure
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Computer Engineering,
SIES Graduate School of Technology

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 Topics to be Covered

• Electromagnetic Spectrum
• Antenna
• Signal Propagation
• Signal Characteristics
• Multiplexing, Spread Spectrum:
DSSS & FHSS

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 Modulation Techniques
• g(t) = At cos(2π ftt + φt) Signal Representation
amplitude At, frequency ft, and phase φt which may be varied in
accordance with data or another modulating signal.
• Digital modulation : digital data (0 and 1) is translated into an analog
signal (baseband signal). Required if digital data has to be transmitted over
a medium that only allows for analog transmission.
• In wireless networks, digital transmission cannot be used.
• The binary bit-stream has to be translated into an analog signal first.
• Schemes used for this translation are:
1. amplitude shift keying (ASK)
2. frequency shift keying (FSK)
phase shift keying (PSK).
• digital modulation translates a 1 Mbit/s bit-stream into a baseband signal
with a bandwidth of 1 MHz.
• In wireless transmission, an analog modulation that shifts the center
frequency of the baseband signal generated by the digital modulation up to
the radio carrier is needed

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 Reasons
• Antennas: An antenna must be the order of magnitude of the signal’s
wavelength in size to be effective. For the 1 MHz signal in the example this
would result in an antenna some hundred meters high.
• Frequency division multiplexing: Using only baseband transmission,
FDM could not be applied. Analog modulation shifts the baseband signals
to different carrier frequencies. The higher the carrier frequency, the more
bandwidth that is available for many baseband signals.
• Medium characteristics: Path-loss, penetration of obstacles, reflection,
scattering, and diffraction –depend heavily on the wavelength of the
signal. Depending on the application, the right carrier frequency with the
desired characteristics has to be chosen.

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Modulation : Radio Transmitter for digital
Data

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Demodulation and data reconstruction
in a receiver

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Amplitude shift keying (ASK), the most
simple digital modulation scheme.

• The two binary values, 1 and 0, are

represented by two different amplitudes.
• This simple scheme only requires low
bandwidth, but is very susceptible to
interference.
• Effects like multi-path propagation,
noise, or path loss heavily influence the
amplitude.

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Binary FSK
(BFSK)

• One frequency f1 to the binary 1 and

another frequency f2 to the binary 0.
• To implement FSK is to switch
between two oscillators, one with
the frequency f1 and the other with
f2, depending on the input.

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Phase shift keying (PSK)

• Phase shift of 180° or π as the 0

follows the 1.
• Shifting the phase by 180° each
time the value of data changes, is
also called binary PSK (BPSK).
• To receive the signal correctly, the
receiver must synchronize in
frequency and phase with the
transmitter. This can be done using
a phase lock loop (PLL).

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Advanced frequency shift keying
MSK is basically BFSK without abrupt phase changes.
• data bits are separated into even and
odd bits, the duration of each bit being
doubled.
• The scheme also uses two
frequencies: f1, the lower frequency,
and f2, the higher frequency, with f2 =
2f1.
• if the even and the odd bit are both 0,
then the higher frequency f2 is
inverted (i.e., f2 is used with a phase
shift of 180°); ●if the even bit is 1, the
odd bit 0, then the lower frequency f1
is inverted.
• if the even bit is 0 and the odd bit is 1,
as in columns 1 to 3, f1 is taken
without changing the phase,
• if both bits are 1 then the original f2 is
taken.

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 Advanced phase shift keying

•QPSK (and other PSK schemes)

can be realized in two variants.
• The phase shift can always be relative
to a reference signal (with the same
frequency).
BPSK QPSK
• If this scheme is used, a phase shift of
0 means that the signal is in phase
with the reference signal.
• A QPSK signal will then
exhibit a phase shift of 45° for the data
11, 135° for 10, 225° for 00, and 315° for
01 – with all phase shifts being relative to
the reference signal.

QPSK in the
time domain 11
 Quadrature amplitude modulation
(QAM)

• Three different amplitudes and 12 angles are combined coding 4 bits per
phase/amplitude change.
• The more ‘points’ used in the phase domain, the harder it is to separate
them.

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Multi-carrier modulation
• MCM has good ISI mitigation property.
• Higher bit rates are more vulnerable to ISI.
• MCM splits the high bit rate stream into many
lower bit rate streams.
• Each stream is sent using an independent carrier
frequency.
• If, for example, n symbols/s have to be
transmitted, each subcarrier transmits n/c
symbols/s with c being the number of
subcarriers.
• One symbol could, for example represent 2 bit as
in QPSK

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 Spread Spectrum
Spread spectrum techniques involve spreading the bandwidth needed
to transmit data.
Advantages:
1. Resistance to narrowband interference.

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Narrow Band Interference without spread
spectrum
• Six different channels use FDM for
multiplexing, each channel has its own
narrow frequency band for transmission.
• Between each frequency band a guard
space is needed to avoid adjacent
channel interference.
• Channel quality also changes over time –
the diagram only shows a snapshot at
one moment.
• Narrowband interference destroys the
transmission of channels 3 and 4.

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Spread Spectrum to avoid Narrow Band
Interference

• All narrowband signals are now spread into broadband signals using the
same frequency range.
• Application shows the tight coupling of CDM and spread spectrum
to recover signal at the receiver.
• One disadvantage is the increased complexity of receivers that
have to despread a signal.
• Another problem is ,Large frequency band is needed due to the
spreading of the signal.

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Spreading the spectrum can be achieved
in two different ways
Direct sequence spread
spectrum (DSSS): System take a
user bit stream and perform
an (XOR) with a so-called
chipping sequence.

Barker Codes
10110111000
11, 110,
1110, 11101, 1110010, and
1111100110101

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 DSSS
• Result is either the sequence 0110101 (if the user bit equals 0)
or its complement 1001010 (if the user bit equals 1).
• While each user bit has a duration tb, the chipping sequence
consists of smaller pulses, called chips, with a duration tc.
• If the chipping sequence is generated properly it appears as
random noise: this sequence is also sometimes called pseudo-
noise sequence. The spreading factor s = tb/tc determines the
bandwidth of the resulting signal.
• If the original signal needs a bandwidth w, the resulting signal
needs s·w after spreading.

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DSSS Transmitter and Receiver

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 Challenges in DSSS
• Receiver has to know the chipping sequence.
• Sequences at the sender and receiver have to be precisely
synchronized because the receiver calculates the product of a chip
with the incoming signal.
• Chip Sequence:
Sending the user data 01 and applying the 11-chip Barker
code 10110111000 results in the spread ‘signal’
011011100001001000111.
There are several paths and signals due to multi path propagation,
so there is need of rake receiver.

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 Rake receiver
Rake receiver uses n correlators for the n strongest paths.
Each correlator is synchronized to the transmitter plus the delay on
that specific path.
As soon as the receiver detects a new path which is stronger than the
currently weakest path, it assigns this new path to the correlator with
the weakest path.
The output of the correlators are then combined and fed into the
decision unit

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Frequency hopping spread spectrum
(FHSS)

• Total available bandwidth is split into many channels of smaller

bandwidth plus guard spaces between the channels.
• Transmitter and receiver stay on one of these channels for a certain
time and then hop to another channel.
• The pattern of channel usage is called the hopping sequence,
the time spend on a channel with a certain frequency is called the
dwell time.

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FHSS: Slow and Fast

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FHSS: Transmitter & Receiver

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 DSSS V/s FHSS

• FHSS systems only use a portion of the total band at any time, while DSSS
systems always use the total bandwidth available.
• DSSS systems are more resistant to fading and multi-path effects.
• DSSS signals are much harder to detect – without knowing the spreading
code, detection is virtually impossible.
• If each sender has its own pseudo-random number sequence for
spreading the signal (DSSS or FHSS), the system implements CDM.

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Thank You!
(suvarnac@sies.edu.in)

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