CHAPTER 2

PULSE CODE MODULATION

 Pulse Code Modulation
 Analogue to Digital Conversion
 Quantizing
 Encoding
PULSE CODE MODULATION
DEFINITION: Pulse code modulation (PCM) is
essentially analog-to-digital conversion of a special type
where the information contained in the instantaneous
samples of an analog signal is represented by digital
words in a serial bit stream.

The advantages of PCM are:

Relatively inexpensive digital circuitry may be used extensively.
PCM signals derived from all types of analog sources may be
merged with data signals and transmitted over a common high-speed
digital communication system.
In long-distance digital telephone systems requiring repeaters, a
clean PCM waveform can be regenerated at the output of each
repeater, where the input consists of a noisy PCM waveform.
The noise performance of a digital system can be superior to that of
an analog system.
The probability of error for the system output can be reduced even
further by the use of appropriate coding techniques.
SAMPLING, QUANTIZING, AND
ENCODING
 The PCM signal is generated by carrying out three basic
operations:
1. Sampling
2. Quantizing
3. Encoding
1. Sampling operation generates a flat-top PAM signal.
2. Quantizing operation approximates the analog values by
using a finite number of levels. This operation is considered
in 3 steps
a) Uniform Quantizer
b) Quantization Error
c) Quantized PAM signal output
3. PCM signal is obtained from the quantized PAM signal by
encoding each quantized sample value into a digital word.
 ANALOG TO DIGITAL CONVERSION

Analog
The Analog-to-digital Converter (ADC)
Input
performs three functions:
Signal
Sampling
Sample Makes the signal discrete in time.
If the analog input has a bandwidth of
W Hz, then the minimum sample
frequency such that the signal can be
ADC reconstructed without distortion.
Quantize Quantization
111
110 Makes the signal discrete in amplitude.
101
100 Round off to one of q discrete levels.
011
010
001
Encode
Encode 000 Maps the quantized values to digital
words that are  bits long.
If the (Nyquist) Sampling Theorem is
satisfied, then only quantization introduces
distortion to the system.
Digital Output
Signal
111 111 001 010 011 111 011
UNIFORM QUANTIZATION
 Most ADC’s use uniform
quantizers.
 The quantization levels of a
uniform quantizer are
equally spaced apart.
 Uniform quantizers are
optimal when the input
distribution is uniform.
When all values within the
Dynamic Range of the
quantizer are equally likely.
QUANTIZATION EXAMPLE

Analogue signal

Sampling TIMING

Quantization levels.
Quantized to 5-levels

Quantization levels
Quantized 10-levels
 QUANTIZATION
The used of a non-uniform quantizer is equivalent to passing the baseband
Signal through a compressor and then appling the compressed signal to a
uniform quantizer.
A particular form of compression law that used in practice is the so-called
μ-law is defined by
Another compression law is the so-called A-law
defined by
ENCODING
 The output of the quantizer is one of M possible signal levels.
 If we want to use a binary transmission system, then we need to map
each quantized sample into an n bit binary word.

 Encoding is the process of representing each quantized sample

by an  bit code word.
 The mapping is one-to-one so there is no distortion introduced by
encoding.
 Some mappings are better than others.
 A Gray code gives the best end-to-end performance.

 The weakness of Gray codes is poor performance when the sign bit

(MSB) is received in error.

 GRAY CODES
 With gray codes adjacent samples differ only in one bit position.
 Example (3 bit quantization):

XQ Natural coding Gray Coding

+7 111 110
+5 110 111
+3 101 101
+1 100 100
-1 011 000
-3 010 001
-5 001 011
-7 000 010
 With this gray code, a single bit error will result in an amplitude
error of only 2.
 Unless the MSB is in error.
 PCM ENCODING EXAMPLE

Levels are encoded

using this table

Table: Quantization levels with belonging code words

Chart 2. Process of restoring a signal.

Chart 1. Quantization and digitalization of a signal. PCM encoded signal in binary form:
Signal is quantized in 11 time points & 8 quantization 101 111 110 001 010 100 111 100 011 010 101
Total of 33 bits were used to encode a signal
segments.
WAVEFORMS IN A PCM SYSTEM FOR M=8

M  2n n  log 2 ( M )
M is the number of Quantization levels
n is the number of bits per sample
PCM TRANSMISSION SYSTEM