LESSON THREE;

NETWORK TRANSMISSION MEDIA

3.1 What is a Network Transmission media ?.

 Communication is the activity or process of exchanging information in mutual
understanding form. A computer system can be vast resource of information. Once this
system is connected to a network, this information can be shared among all other users.
 A communication media is required to connect different computer systems to facilitate
the information exchange.
 Transmission medium is a physical path between the transmitter and the receiver i.e it is
the channel through which data is sent from one place to another.
 Transmission media is a pathway that carries the information from sender to receiver.
3.2 Classification of transmission media ?.
Following diagram will give a clear picture of different type of transmission media.

Guided Transmission Media

 Guided/physical/non-wireless/bounded media have a physical link between sender and

receiver. Mainly there are three categories of guided media: twisted-Pair, coaxial, and fiber-
optic.
 It is also referred to as Wired or Bounded transmission media. Signals being
transmitted are directed and confined in a narrow pathway by using physical links.
Features: of guided transmission media
 High Speed
 Secure
 Used for comparatively shorter distances

BY: MR. KEVIN NJAGI (LECTURER – ST. PAUL’S UNIVERSITY) @ JAN - APRIL 2024 1
1. Twisted-Pair Cable

 A twisted consist of two conductors (usually copper), each with its own colored plastic
insulation. In the past, two parallel wires were used for communication. However,
electromagnetic interference from devices such as a motor can create over noise those
wires. If the two wires are parallel, the wire closest to the source of the noise gets more
interference than the wire further away. Which results in an uneven load and a damaged
signal.
 If, however, the two wires are twisted around each other at regular intervals (between 2 to
12 twist per foot), each wire is the closer to the noise source for half the time and the
further away the other half. With the twisting interference can be equalized for both
wires. Twisting does not always eliminate the impact of noise, but does significantly
reduce it Twisted cable comes in two forms: unshielded and shielded.

Unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) cable

 UTP consists of a number of twisted pairs with simple plastic casing. UTP is commonly
used in telephone system.

Advantages:
 Least expensive
 Easy to install
 High speed capacity

Disadvantages:
 Susceptible to external interference
 Lower capacity and performance in comparison to STP
 Short distance transmission due to attenuation

BY: MR. KEVIN NJAGI (LECTURER – ST. PAUL’S UNIVERSITY) @ JAN - APRIL 2024 2
The Electrical Industry Association (EIA) divides UTP into different categories by quality grade.
The rating for each category refers to conductor size, electrical characteristics, and twists per
foot.

 Category 1: Applies to transmit traditional UTP telephones cabling, which is designed to

carry voice but not data.
 Category 2: Certifies UTP cabling for bandwidth up to 4 Mbps and consists of four pair of
wires. Since 4 Mbps is slower than most networking technologies in the use today.
 Category 2 is rarely encountered in networking environment.
 Category 3: Certifies UTP cabling for bandwidth up to 10Mbps. This includes most
conventional networking technologies, such as 10BaseT Ethernet and 4Mbps token ring etc.
Category 3 consists of four pairs, each having minimum 3 twist per foot.
 Category 4: Certifies UTP cabling for bandwidth up to 10Mbps. This includes primarily
10BaseT Ethernet and 16Mbps token ring. Category 4 consists of four pairs.
 Category5: Used for data transmission up to 100Mbps Category 5 also consists of four
pairs. UTP is particularly prone to cross talk, and the shielding included with STP is
designed specifically to reduce this problem.

Shielded Twisted Pair (STP) cable

 STP includes shielding to reduce cross talk as well as to limit the effects of external
interference. For most STP cables, this means that the wiring includes a wire braid inside
the cladding or sheath material as well as a foil wrap around each individual wire.
 This shield improves the cable's transmission and interference characteristics, which, in
tern, support higher bandwidth over longer distance than UTP.

Advantages:

 Better performance at a higher data rate in comparison to UTP

 Eliminates crosstalk
 Comparatively faster
Disadvantages:

 Comparitively difficult to install and manufacture

 More expensive

BY: MR. KEVIN NJAGI (LECTURER – ST. PAUL’S UNIVERSITY) @ JAN - APRIL 2024 3
  Bulky

2. Coaxial Cable:

 Coaxial cable, commonly called coax, has two conductors that share the same axis. A solid
copper wire runs down the center of the cable, and this wire is surrounded by plastic foam
insulation. The foam is surrounded by a second conductor, wire mesh tube, metallic foil, or
both. The wire mesh protects the wire from EMI.
 It is often called the shield. A tough plastic jacket forms the cover of the cable, providing
protection and insulation

 Where Ethernet is concerned, there are two types of coaxial cable, called this Ethernet
(also known as thinnet or thinwire,) and thick Ethernet (also known as thinnet or
thickwire). The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) designates these
cable types as 10Base2 and 10Base5, respectively, where these notations indicates:
Total bandwidth for the technology: in this case, 10 means 10Mbps Base: indicates that
the network uses baseband signaling and this applies to both types of cable.
 2 or 5: a rough indicator of maximum segment length, measured in hundreds of meters;
thinwire support a maximum segment length of 185 meters, which rounds up to 200;
thickwire supports a maximum segment length of 500 meter

Advantages:
 High Bandwidth
 Better noise Immunity
 Easy to install and expand
 Inexpensive
Disadvantages:
 Single cable failure can disrupt the entire network

BY: MR. KEVIN NJAGI (LECTURER – ST. PAUL’S UNIVERSITY) @ JAN - APRIL 2024 4
3. Fiber Optic Cable:

 Fiber optic cable transmits light signals rather than electrical signals. It is enormously
more efficient than the other network transmission media. As soon as it comes down in
price (both in terms of the cable and installation cost), fiber optic will be the choice for
network cabling.
 A light pulse can be used to signal a ‗1‘ bit; the absence of a pulse signals a ‗0‘ bit.
 Visible light has a frequency of about 108 MHz, so the bandwidth of an optical
transmission system is potentially enormous.
 An optical transmission system has three components: the transmission medium, the light
source and the detector. The transmission medium is an ultra-thin fiber of glass or fused
silica. The light source is either a LED (Light Emit Diode) or a laser diode, both of which
emits light pulses when a electrical current is applied. The detector is a photo diode, which
generates an electrical pulse when light falls on it.

 A cable may contain a single fiber, but often fibers are bundled together in the center of the
cable. Optical fiber are smaller and lighter than copper wire. One optical fiber is
approximately the same diameter as a human hair.

Basic elements of Fibre optic cable:

 Core: The optical fibre consists of a narrow strand of glass or plastic known as a core. A core is a
light transmission area of the fibre. The more the area of the core, the more light will be
transmitted into the fibre.
 Cladding: The concentric layer of glass is known as cladding. The main functionality of the
cladding is to provide the lower refractive index at the core interface as to cause the reflection
within the core so that the light waves are transmitted through the fibre.

BY: MR. KEVIN NJAGI (LECTURER – ST. PAUL’S UNIVERSITY) @ JAN - APRIL 2024 5
  Jacket: The protective coating consisting of plastic is known as a jacket. The main purpose of a
jacket is to preserve the fibre strength, absorb shock and extra fibre protection.
Advantages of Fiber Optic
 Noise resistance: it is immune to Electromagnetic Interference (EMI)
 Less signal attenuation: signal can run for miles without requiring regeneration
 Higher bandwidth: fiber optic cable can support dramatically higher bandwidths (and
hence data rate) than all other cables. Currently, data rates and bandwidth utilization over
fiber-optic cable are limited not by the medium but by the signal generation and reception
technology available. A typical bandwidth for fiber optic is 100Mbps to 1Gbps.

 Resistance to corrosive materials

Disadvantages of Fiber Optic

 Cost : most expensive among all the cables
 Installation / maintenance: is high
 Fragility : glass fiber is more easily broken than wire
 unidirectional, ie, will need another fibre, if we need bidirectional communication
 Difficult to install and maintain

UnGuided Transmission

 An unguided transmission transmits the electromagnetic waves without using any physical
medium. Therefore it is also known as wireless transmission.
 In unguided media, air is the media through which the electromagnetic energy can flow
easily.

Unguided transmission is broadly classified into three categories:

Radio waves
 Radio waves are the electromagnetic waves that are transmitted in all the directions of free
space.
 Radio waves are omnidirectional, i.e., the signals are propagated in all the directions.
 The range in frequencies of radio waves is from 3Khz to 1 khz.
 In the case of radio waves, the sending and receiving antenna are not aligned, i.e., the wave
sent by the sending antenna can be received by any receiving antenna.

BY: MR. KEVIN NJAGI (LECTURER – ST. PAUL’S UNIVERSITY) @ JAN - APRIL 2024 6
 An example of the radio wave is FM radio.

Applications Of Radio waves:

o A Radio wave is useful for multicasting when there is one sender and many receivers.
o An FM radio, television, cordless phones are examples of a radio wave.

Advantages Of Radio transmission:

o Radio transmission is mainly used for wide area networks and mobile cellular phones.
o Radio waves cover a large area, and they can penetrate the walls.
o Radio transmission provides a higher transmission rate.

Microwaves
Microwaves are of two types:
o Terrestrial microwave
o Satellite microwave communication.

Terrestrial Microwave Transmission

o Terrestrial Microwave transmission is a technology that transmits the focused beam of a
radio signal from one ground-based microwave transmission antenna to another.
o Microwaves are the electromagnetic waves having the frequency in the range from 1GHz to
1000 GHz.
o Microwaves are unidirectional as the sending and receiving antenna is to be aligned, i.e., the
waves sent by the sending antenna are narrowly focussed.
o In this case, antennas are mounted on the towers to send a beam to another antenna which is
km away.
o It works on the line of sight transmission, i.e., the antennas mounted on the towers are the
direct sight of each other.

Characteristics of Microwave:
o Frequency range: The frequency range of terrestrial microwave is from 4-6 GHz to 21-23
GHz.
o Bandwidth: It supports the bandwidth from 1 to 10 Mbps.
o Short distance: It is inexpensive for short distance.
o Long distance: It is expensive as it requires a higher tower for a longer distance.
o Attenuation: Attenuation means loss of signal. It is affected by environmental conditions
and antenna size.

Advantages Of Microwave:
o Microwave transmission is cheaper than using cables.

BY: MR. KEVIN NJAGI (LECTURER – ST. PAUL’S UNIVERSITY) @ JAN - APRIL 2024 7
 o It is free from land acquisition as it does not require any land for the installation of cables.
o Microwave transmission provides an easy communication in terrains as the installation of
cable in terrain is quite a difficult task.
o Communication over oceans can be achieved by using microwave transmission.

Disadvantages of Microwave transmission:

o Eavesdropping: An eavesdropping creates insecure communication. Any malicious user
can catch the signal in the air by using its own antenna.
o Out of phase signal: A signal can be moved out of phase by using microwave
transmission.
o Susceptible to weather condition: A microwave transmission is susceptible to weather
condition. This means that any environmental change such as rain, wind can distort the
signal.
o Bandwidth limited: Allocation of bandwidth is limited in the case of microwave
transmission.

Satellite Microwave Communication

o A satellite is a physical object that revolves around the earth at a known height.
o Satellite communication is more reliable nowadays as it offers more flexibility than cable
and fibre optic systems.
o We can communicate with any point on the globe by using satellite communication.

How Does Satellite work?

 The satellite accepts the signal that is transmitted from the earth station, and it amplifies the
signal. The amplified signal is retransmitted to another earth station.

Advantages Of Satellite Microwave Communication:

o The coverage area of a satellite microwave is more than the terrestrial microwave.
o The transmission cost of the satellite is independent of the distance from the centre of the
coverage area.
o Satellite communication is used in mobile and wireless communication applications.
o It is easy to install.
o It is used in a wide variety of applications such as weather forecasting, radio/TV signal
broadcasting, mobile communication, etc.

Disadvantages Of Satellite Microwave Communication:

o Satellite designing and development requires more time and higher cost.
o The Satellite needs to be monitored and controlled on regular periods so that it remains in
orbit.

BY: MR. KEVIN NJAGI (LECTURER – ST. PAUL’S UNIVERSITY) @ JAN - APRIL 2024 8
 o The life of the satellite is about 12-15 years. Due to this reason, another launch of the
satellite has to be planned before it becomes non-functional.

Infrared
o An infrared transmission is a wireless technology used for communication over short
ranges.
o The frequency of the infrared in the range from 300 GHz to 400 THz.
o It is used for short-range communication such as data transfer between two cell phones, TV
remote operation, data transfer between a computer and cell phone resides in the same
closed area.

Characteristics Of Infrared:
o It supports high bandwidth, and hence the data rate will be very high.
o Infrared waves cannot penetrate the walls. Therefore, the infrared communication in one
room cannot be interrupted by the nearby rooms.
o An infrared communication provides better security with minimum interference.
o Infrared communication is unreliable outside the building because the sun rays will
interfere with the infrared waves.

BY: MR. KEVIN NJAGI (LECTURER – ST. PAUL’S UNIVERSITY) @ JAN - APRIL 2024 9