L23: 

Qualitative Issues in PCM
C&C 11.1, 12.1‐2

Previous lecture:
 Matched Filter minimises P[bit error]
 Variance of sampled matched filter output is constant,
regardless of transmitted bit
 For equally likely symbols, optimal detection threshold is
halfway between conditional mean of filter output

This lecture:

 PCM vs. Analog Modulation

 Inter-symbol Interference

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 Effect of Bit Errors in PCM Systems

When PCM is used on analog messages, signal quality is

better quantified by output SNR than by P[Bit Error].

For binary NRZ PCM with  bits/sample, each bit is

 (S / N ) b  .
misdetected with prob. pe  Q 
  

As each  -bit block is a binary representation of a

quantised value, the effect of bit errors depends on the
binary encoding format (natural? BCD? Gray?) & the
position of the bits within the block.

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 Natural Binary Coding

If a natural binary format is used & (S / N )b >>  ( >>1 ),

P[1 bit error in codeword] >> P[  2 bit errors in codeword]
From Quantisation Noise.
 
From Channel Noise

| x |2max 4 | x |2max pe
Output noise power  

4 .3 3
S 3PX / | x |2max 
  
 N o  ( S / N )b 
4  4Q 
  

If (S / N )b >>  2 , quantisation noise dominates.

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 Output v.(Baseband SNR/nu) F12.2-1,Carlson

 SNR  R   SNR b  ,  SNR  D   SNR o

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Comparison with Analog Modulation (Carlson et al, Fig. 12.2-2)
    SNR b ,  SNR  D   SNR o
b=    ,    
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 Comments on PCM

 Above PCM threshold, extra transmit power does not

improve SNR Should operate near threshold.
 Like FM, PCM increases bandwidth to  output SNR,
but SNR gain is exponential, not just quadratic.
 If enough baseband SNR is available, analog
modulation is a better option than high  PCM
 However, by transmitting bits not an analog signal, we
can use error control coding to achieve near-optimal
performance over noisy channels (more in Adv. Comm.
Sys.)

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 Inter-symbol Interference (ISI)

Basic assumption so far: channel has sufficient BW to pass

each digital pulse undistorted and simply adds noise.

However, in practice channels suffer from magnitude &

phase distortion.

This can significantly alter the shape of digital pulses, which

typically have not insignificant sidelobes outside their
nominal bandwidth.

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In particular, each pulse duration may broaden.

Effect of Nonideal Channel on Pulses (Fig. 11.1-2, Carlson et al)

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 ISI Rudiments

Let p(t) be a signalling pulse. Suppose a digitally modulated

stream of these pulses

s(t)  n0 d n p(t  nTb )

is transmitted over a distorting channel H ( f ) , which also
adds independent Gaussian white noise {N (t)}.

As usual, pass the noisy received signal through a filter

M ( f ) to improve SNR at the decision instants t  Tb ,2Tb ,

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 ISI Rudiments, continued

If ~p(t) : ( p * h * m)(t) & Z (t) : (h * m * N )(t) , then by LTI, the

filter output is given by

Y (t)   n0 d n p(t  nTb )  Z(t)

Now, at a given sampling instant t  kTb , we want to recover

the coefficient d k 1 transmitted during the previous bit period.
The output of the filter is

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 Desired value 0ISI Noise term

Y (kTb )  d k 1p(Tb )   n:nk 1 d n p (k  n)Tb   Z(kTb )

Rudiments of ISI, cont.

Causality  Summands d k p(0),d k 1p(Tb ), d k 2 p(2Tb ), =0.

But nonideal channel/filter  Duration of ~p(t) may be  2Tb.

 Summands d k 2 p(2Tb ),d k 3 p(3Tb ), ,d 0 p(kTb ), corresponding

to previously transmitted symbols, may be  0

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ISI is in a way a harder problem than noise, since we can’t
solve it by simply increasing the transmit power (why?)

Eye Diagram (C&C, Fig 11.1-3)

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Eye Diagram Parameters (C&C, Fig 11.1-4)

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 Mitigating ISI by Pulse Shaping

For a known channel h(t) , design the pulse p(t) and/or the
filter m(t) to make
~
p(t) : ( p * h * m)(t) | ~
p(T ) | when t  2T ,3T ,,
b b b

(while keeping the ratio of instantaneous signal power

|~  
p(T ) |2 to noise power E (h * m * N )(T ) 2 high)
b b

(More in Adv. Comm. Systems)

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 Mitigating ISI by Equalisation

Given the matched filter output pulse shape ~p and the noise
statistics, in discrete-time we have
Noise term
k
Yk : Y (kTb )   n0 d k pnk  Zk  (d * p) k  Zk

I.e., the desired sequence of digital coefficients {d k } is

effectively distorted by a discrete-time filter { ~pk }, + noise

 Design a discrete-time equalisation filter which recovers

a noisy estimate of {d k } from {Yk }.
(More in Adv. Signal Processing)

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