Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Transmission mediaBCA-updated
Transmission mediaBCA-updated
BASIS FOR
ANALOG SIGNAL DIGITAL SIGNAL
COMPARISON
Basic An analog signal is a continuous wave A digital signal is a discrete wave that carries
that changes over a time period. information in binary form.
Representation An analog signal is represented by a A digital signal is represented by square waves.
sine wave.
Description An analog signal is described by the A digital signal is described by bit rate and bit
amplitude, period or frequency, and intervals.
phase.
Range Analog signal has no fixed range. Digital signal has a finite numbers i.e. 0 and 1.
Distortion An analog signal is more prone to A digital signal is less prone to distortion.
distortion.
Transmit An analog signal transmit data in the A digital signal carries data in the binary form i.e. 0
form of a wave. and 1.
Example The human voice is the best example of Signals used for transmission in a computer are the
an analog signal. digital signal.
• Transmission media is a communication channel that carries the
information from the sender to the receiver.
• Data is transmitted through the electromagnetic signals.
• The main functionality of the transmission media is to carry the
information in the form of bits through LAN(Local Area Network).
• It is a physical path between transmitter and receiver in data
communication.
• In a copper-based network, the bits in the form of electrical signals.
• In a fiber based network, the bits in the form of light pulses.
• In OSI(Open System Interconnection) phase, transmission media
supports the Layer 1.
• The electrical signals can be sent through the copper wire, fiber optics,
atmosphere, water, and vacuum.
• The characteristics and quality of data transmission are determined
by the characteristics of medium and signal.
• Transmission media is of two types are wired media and wireless
media.
• In wired media, medium characteristics are more important
whereas,
• In wireless media, signal characteristics are more important.
• Different transmission media have different properties such as
bandwidth, delay, cost and ease of installation and maintenance.
• The transmission media is available in the lowest layer of the OSI
reference model, i.e., Physical layer.
Classification Of Transmission Media:
Difference Between Attenuation and Distortion
Advantages:
•Increased capacity and bandwidth
•Lightweight
•Less signal attenuation
•Immunity to electromagnetic interference
•Resistance to corrosive materials
Disadvantages:
•Difficult to install and maintain
•High cost
BASIS FOR COMPARISON OPTICAL FIBRE COAXIAL CABLE
Basic Transmission of the signal is in optical Transmission of the signal is in electrical
form (light form). form.
Composition of the cable Glass and plastics Plastic, metal foil and metal wire (usually
copper).
Efficiency High Low
Cost Highly expensive Less expensive
External magnetic field Doesn't affect the cable Affects the cable
Noise immunity High Intermediate
Diameter of the cable Smaller Larger
Weight of the cable Lighter Heavier comparatively
Type Advantages Disadvantages
Less expensive, Attenuation leads to short-distance
Unshielded
Easy to install, communication,
Twisted Pair
High speed Susceptible to external interference
Shielded Twisted Reduced crosstalk, Bulky and expensive,
Pair Faster than UTP Difficult to install
Increased bandwidth,
Optical Fibre Cable High-cost, Fragile
Immunity to interference
High bandwidth, Complete disruption due to single
Coaxial Cable
Noise immunity cable failure
Easy to generate,
Radio More interference
Can penetrate obstacles
Infrared Less interference Cannot penetrate obstacles
Applications of Transmission Media in Computer Networks
Type Uses
Unshielded Twisted Pair Telephonic applications
Shielded Twisted Pair Fast data rate ethernet
Optical Fibre Cable For transferring large volume of data
Coaxial Cable Cable TVs, Analog TV
Radio Cordless phones, AM/FM radios
Infrared Wireless mouse, printers, keyboards
Microwave Mobile phones, televisions
Attenuation
Whenever a signal passes, it faces loss of energy. This happens to overcome the resistance of medium.
To compensate the signal loss, amplifiers are used. Amplifiers amplify the signal.
Transmission Impairments in Data Communication
Noise
As the name tells,
• Noise is a random fluctuation in a signal.
• It is an undesirable electrical energy, which is annoying.
Induced Noise:
The noise comes from motors.
Crosstalk:
The noise comes when another wire affects a wire.
Distortion
• When signal changes its form, it is known as distortion.
• If at the receiving end, the components are out of phase, it means distortion occurred.
Propagation Time
• The time required for a signal or bit to travel from one
point to another is Propagation Time.
• The signal travels from one point of the transmission
medium to another.
Propagation Speed
• The distance a signal or bit travels through a transmission medium in one second.
• For electromagnetic signals, the propagation medium depends on the medium and frequency of the signal.
Wavelength
• Wavelength is a measure of distance a signal can travel in a period.
• It is the distance between corresponding points.
• The units of wavelength are meter, centimeters, etc.
Above,
f = frequency
c = Propagation Speed
Shannon Capacity
To determine the theoretical highest data rate for a channel, he introduced the following Shanon Capacity
formulae in 1944,
Shannon Capacity (C) = B log2 (1 + S/N)
As shown above,
S = Signal Power in Watts
N = Noise power in Watts
B = Channel Bandwidth
C = Shannon Capacity in bits/ second (bps)
S/N = Signal to noise ratio
Example1:
Input: A network with bandwidth of 10 Mbps can pass only an average of 12, 000 frames
per minute where each frame carries an average of 10, 000 bits.
What will be the throughput for this network?
Output:
We can calculate the throughput as-
Throughput = (12, 000 x 10, 000) / 60 = 2 Mbps
The throughput is nearly equal to one-fifth of the bandwidth in this case.