UNIT-1

Signal
A signal is a function of one or more variables that indicate some (usually physical)
phenomenon. Signal Serves as Carriers of information between communication devices.
They can Convey Different types of information depending on the Application required.
These signals can be of different forms.
Examples of Signals
• Human voice
• Voltage in electrical circuits
• Room temperature controlled by a thermostat system
• Position, speed, and acceleration of an aircraft
• Accelerometers measured with accelerometers in mobile phones
• Force measured with force sensors in robotic systems
• Electromagnetic waves used to transmit information in wireless computer
networks
• Digital photographs • Digital Music Recording.
Types of Signals
There Are Different Types of Signals Which are given Below:
• Analog Signals
• Digital Signals
• Real and Complex Signals
• Deterministic and Random Signals
• Periodic and Non-periodic Signals
1. Analog Signals
This signals are continues (e.g., a real variable) and infinitely varying with time
parameter or can take any value within a given range.
• This signals are represented by the sine wave
• Example Like audio signals, temperature readings, sound waves or television
waves.

Analog Signal Graph

2. Digital Signals
A signal that is a function of discrete variables (e.g., an integer variable) is said to be
discrete time and this are represent in binary form (0s and 1s).
• More robust against noise.
• Commonly used in computer systems and telecommunications.

Digital Signal Graph

Periodic and Non-periodic Signals

A continuous signal is a signal of infinite duration that repeats the same pattern over and
over again.
One-sided or time-limited signals can never be periodic. Any continuous-time signal
which is not periodic signal is known as non-periodic (or aperiodic) signal.

Periodic Signal Graph

Comparison between Analog and Digital Signal

 Features Analog Signal Digital Signal

It has Continuous
This is discrete and
Representation waveforms and infinite
finite values.
number of values.

such as voltage, current

Representation medium In Binary digits
and sound waves.

Smooth and continuous

Waveform Step-wise changes
curve

Sensitive to noise and Less Sensitive to noise

Accuracy
interface. and interface.

Easy processing and

Processing Complex processing
flexible.

Bandwidth consumption Bandwidth consumption

Bandwidth
is variable. is fixed.

This are compatible

This are compatible
with traditional devices
with modern devices
Device Compatibility such as analog cameras,
such as computers,
analog audio systems
smartphones etc.
etc.

Power consumption Use more power. Use less Power.

Temperature, flow
Example Motor start, trip etc.
measurement etc.

Transmission Impairment in Data Communication

•••
In communication system, analog signals travel through transmission media, which tends to
deteriorate the quality of analog signal, which means that the signal at the beginning of the
medium is not the same as the signal at the end of the medium. The imperfection causes
signal impairment. Below are the causes of the impairment.
 Causes of impairment –

• Attenuation – It means loss of energy. The strength of signal decreases with

increasing distance which causes loss of energy in overcoming resistance of medium.
This is also known as attenuated signal. Amplifiers are used to amplify the
attenuated signal which gives the original signal back and compensate for this loss.

•
Distortion – It means changes in the form or shape of the signal. This is generally
seen in composite signals made up with different frequencies. Each frequency
component has its own propagation speed travelling through a medium. And thats
why it delay in arriving at the final destination Every component arrive at different
time which leads to distortion. Therefore, they have different phases at receiver end
from what they had at senders end.

• Noise – The random or unwanted signal that mixes up with the original signal is
called noise. There are several types of noise such as induced noise, crosstalk noise,
thermal noise and impulse noise which may corrupt the signal.

Induced noise comes from sources such as motors and appliances. These devices act
as sending antenna and transmission medium act as receiving
 antenna. Thermal noise is movement of electrons in wire which creates an extra
signal. Crosstalk noise is when one wire affects the other wire. Impulse noise is a
signal with high energy that comes from lightning or power lines

Encoding
Encoding is the process of converting the data or a given sequence of characters,
symbols, alphabets etc., into a specified format, for the secured transmission of
data. Decoding is the reverse process of encoding which is to extract the information
from the converted format.

Data Encoding

Encoding is the process of using various patterns of voltage or current levels to

represent 1s and 0s of the digital signals on the transmission link.

The common types of line encoding are Unipolar, Polar, Bipolar, and Manchester.

Encoding Techniques
The data encoding technique is divided into the following types, depending upon the
type of data conversion.

• Analog data to Analog signals − The modulation techniques such as Amplitude

Modulation, Frequency Modulation and Phase Modulation of analog signals, fall
under this category.
• Analog data to Digital signals − This process can be termed as digitization, which is
done by Pulse Code Modulation PCM. Hence, it is nothing but digital modulation.
As we have already discussed, sampling and quantization are the important
factors in this. Delta Modulation gives a better output than PCM.
• Digital data to Analog signals − The modulation techniques such as Amplitude Shift
Keying ASK, Frequency Shift Keying FSK, Phase Shift Keying PSK, etc., fall under
this category. These will be discussed in subsequent chapters.
• Digital data to Digital signals − These are in this section. There are several ways to
map digital data to digital signals. Some of them are

•
 Unipolar scheme – In this scheme, all the signal levels are either above or below the axis.

Non Return to Zero NRZ

NRZ Codes has 1 for High voltage level and 0 for Low voltage level. The main
behavior of NRZ codes is that the voltage level remains constant during bit interval.
The end or start of a bit will not be indicated and it will maintain the same voltage
state, if the value of the previous bit and the value of the present bit are same.

The following figure explains the concept of NRZ coding.

If the above example is considered, as there is a long sequence of constant voltage

level and the clock synchronization may be lost due to the absence of bit interval, it
becomes difficult for the receiver to differentiate between 0 and 1.

There are two variations in NRZ namely −

NRZ - L NRZ–LEVEL
There is a change in the polarity of the signal, only when the incoming signal changes
from 1 to 0 or from 0 to 1. It is the same as NRZ, however, the first bit of the input
signal should have a change of polarity.

NRZ - I NRZ–INVERTED
If a 1 occurs at the incoming signal, then there occurs a transition at the beginning of
the bit interval. For a 0 at the incoming signal, there is no transition at the beginning
of the bit interval.

NRZ codes has a disadvantage that the synchronization of the transmitter clock with
the receiver clock gets completely disturbed, when there is a string of 1s and 0s.
Hence, a separate clock line needs to be provided.
Bi-phase Encoding
The signal level is checked twice for every bit time, both initially and in the middle.
Hence, the clock rate is double the data transfer rate and thus the modulation rate is
also doubled. The clock is taken from the signal itself. The bandwidth required for this
coding is greater.

There are two types of Bi-phase Encoding.

• Bi-phase Manchester
• Differential Manchester

Bi-phase Manchester
In this type of coding, the transition is done at the middle of the bit-interval. The
transition for the resultant pulse is from High to Low in the middle of the interval, for
the input bit 1. While the transition is from Low to High for the input bit 0.

Differential Manchester
In this type of coding, there always occurs a transition in the middle of the bit
interval. If there occurs a transition at the beginning of the bit interval, then the input
bit is 0. If no transition occurs at the beginning of the bit interval, then the input bit
is 1.

Bipolar schemes – In this scheme there are three voltage levels positive, negative, and zero.
The voltage level for one data element is at zero, while the voltage level for the other element
alternates between positive and negative.
Digital Modulation provides more information capacity, high data security, quicker
system availability with great quality communication. Hence, digital modulation
techniques have a greater demand, for their capacity to convey larger amounts of
data than analog ones.

There are many types of digital modulation techniques and we can even use a
combination of these techniques as well. In this chapter, we will be discussing the
most prominent digital modulation techniques.

Amplitude Shift Keying

The amplitude of the resultant output depends upon the input data whether it should
be a zero level or a variation of positive and negative, depending upon the carrier
frequency.

Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK) is a type of Amplitude Modulation which represents the
binary data in the form of variations in the amplitude of a signal.

Following is the diagram for ASK modulated waveform along with its input.
Any modulated signal has a high frequency carrier. The binary signal when ASK is
modulated, gives a zero value for LOW input and gives the carrier output for HIGH
input.

Frequency Shift Keying

The frequency of the output signal will be either high or low, depending upon the
input data applied.

Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) is the digital modulation technique in which the frequency
of the carrier signal varies according to the discrete digital changes. FSK is a scheme
of frequency modulation.

The output of a FSK modulated wave is high in frequency for a binary HIGH input and
is low in frequency for a binary LOW input. The binary 1s and 0s are
called Mark and Space frequencies.

Phase Shift Keying

The phase of the output signal gets shifted depending upon the input. These are
mainly of two types, namely BPSK and QPSK, according to the number of phase
shifts.

Phase Shift Keying (PSK) is the digital modulation technique in which the phase of the
carrier signal is changed by varying the sine and cosine inputs at a particular time.

PSK technique is widely used for wireless LANs, bio-metric, contactless operations,
along with RFID and Bluetooth communications.

PSK is of two types, depending upon the phases the signal gets shifted. They are −

Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK)

This is also called as 2-phase PSK (or) Phase Reversal Keying. In this technique, the sine
wave carrier takes two phase reversals such as 0° and 180°.

BPSK is basically a DSB-SC (Double Sideband Suppressed Carrier) modulation

scheme, for message being the digital information.
Following is the image of BPSK Modulated output wave along with its input.

BPSK

Reference Signal

Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK)

This is the phase shift keying technique, in which the sine wave carrier takes four
phase reversals such as 0°, 90°, 180°, and 270°.

If this kind of techniques are further extended, PSK can be done by eight or sixteen
values also, depending upon the requirement. The following figure represents the
QPSK waveform for two bits input, which shows the modulated result for different
instances of binary inputs.

QPSK is a variation of BPSK, and it is also a DSB-SC (Double Sideband Suppressed

Carrier) modulation scheme, which send two bits of digital information at a time,
called as bigits.

Switching techniques
In large networks, there can be multiple paths from sender to receiver. The switching technique will
decide the best route for data transmission.

Switching technique is used to connect the systems for making one-to-one communication.

Classification Of Switching Techniques

Circuit Switching

o Circuit switching is a switching technique that establishes a dedicated path between sender
and receiver.
o In the Circuit Switching Technique, once the connection is established then the dedicated
path will remain to exist until the connection is terminated.
o Circuit switching in a network operates in a similar way as the telephone works.
o A complete end-to-end path must exist before the communication takes place.
o In case of circuit switching technique, when any user wants to send the data, voice, video, a
request signal is sent to the receiver then the receiver sends back the acknowledgment to
ensure the availability of the dedicated path. After receiving the acknowledgment, dedicated
path transfers the data.
o Circuit switching is used in public telephone network. It is used for voice transmission.
o Fixed data can be transferred at a time in circuit switching technology.
o Circuit establishment
o Data transfer
o Circuit Disconnect

Advantages Of Circuit Switching:

o In the case of Circuit Switching technique, the communication channel is dedicated.

o It has fixed bandwidth.

Disadvantages Of Circuit Switching:

 o Once the dedicated path is established, the only delay occurs in the speed of data
transmission.
o It takes a long time to establish a connection approx 10 seconds during which no data can
be transmitted.
o It is more expensive than other switching techniques as a dedicated path is required for each
connection.
o It is inefficient to use because once the path is established and no data is transferred, then
the capacity of the path is wasted.
o In this case, the connection is dedicated therefore no other data can be transferred even if
the channel is free.

Message Switching

o Message Switching is a switching technique in which a message is transferred as a complete

unit and routed through intermediate nodes at which it is stored and forwarded.
o In Message Switching technique, there is no establishment of a dedicated path between the
sender and receiver.
o The destination address is appended to the message. Message Switching provides a dynamic
routing as the message is routed through the intermediate nodes based on the information
available in the message.
o Message switches are programmed in such a way so that they can provide the most efficient
routes.
o Each and every node stores the entire message and then forward it to the next node. This
type of network is known as store and forward network.
o Message switching treats each message as an independent entity.

Advantages Of Message Switching

o Data channels are shared among the communicating devices that improve the efficiency of
using available bandwidth.
o Traffic congestion can be reduced because the message is temporarily stored in the nodes.
 o Message priority can be used to manage the network.
o The size of the message which is sent over the network can be varied. Therefore, it supports
the data of unlimited size.

Disadvantages Of Message Switching

o The message switches must be equipped with sufficient storage to enable them to store the
messages until the message is forwarded.
o The Long delay can occur due to the storing and forwarding facility provided by the message
switching technique.

Packet Switching

o The packet switching is a switching technique in which the message is sent in one go, but it
is divided into smaller pieces, and they are sent individually.
o The message splits into smaller pieces known as packets and packets are given a unique
number to identify their order at the receiving end.
o Every packet contains some information in its headers such as source address, destination
address and sequence number.
o Packets will travel across the network, taking the shortest path as possible.
o All the packets are reassembled at the receiving end in correct order.
o If any packet is missing or corrupted, then the message will be sent to resend the message.
o If the correct order of the packets is reached, then the acknowledgment message will be sent.

Approaches Of Packet Switching:

There are two approaches to Packet Switching:

Datagram Packet switching:

 o It is a packet switching technology in which packet is known as a datagram, is considered as
an independent entity. Each packet contains the information about the destination and switch
uses this information to forward the packet to the correct destination.
o The packets are reassembled at the receiving end in correct order.
o In Datagram Packet Switching technique, the path is not fixed.
o Intermediate nodes take the routing decisions to forward the packets.
o Datagram Packet Switching is also known as connectionless switching.

Virtual Circuit Switching

o Virtual Circuit Switching is also known as connection-oriented switching.

o In the case of Virtual circuit switching, a preplanned route is established before the messages
are sent.
o Call request and call accept packets are used to establish the connection between sender and
receiver.
o In this case, the path is fixed for the duration of a logical connection.

Let's understand the concept of virtual circuit switching through a diagram:

o In the above diagram, A and B are the sender and receiver respectively. 1 and 2 are the nodes.
o Call request and call accept packets are used to establish a connection between the sender
and receiver.
o When a route is established, data will be transferred.
o After transmission of data, an acknowledgment signal is sent by the receiver that the message
has been received.
o If the user wants to terminate the connection, a clear signal is sent for the termination.

Differences b/w Datagram approach and Virtual Circuit approach

 Datagram approach Virtual Circuit approach

Node takes routing decisions to forward Node does not take any routing decision.
the packets.

Congestion cannot occur as all the Congestion can occur when the node is busy, and
packets travel in different directions. it does not allow other packets to pass through.

It is more flexible as all the packets are It is not very flexible.

treated as an independent entity.

Advantages Of Packet Switching:

o Cost-effective: In packet switching technique, switching devices do not require massive

secondary storage to store the packets, so cost is minimized to some extent. Therefore, we
can say that the packet switching technique is a cost-effective technique.
o Reliable: If any node is busy, then the packets can be rerouted. This ensures that the Packet
Switching technique provides reliable communication.
o Efficient: Packet Switching is an efficient technique. It does not require any established path
prior to the transmission, and many users can use the same communication channel
simultaneously, hence makes use of available bandwidth very efficiently.

Disadvantages Of Packet Switching:

o Packet Switching technique cannot be implemented in those applications that require low
delay and high-quality services.
o The protocols used in a packet switching technique are very complex and requires high
implementation cost.
o If the network is overloaded or corrupted, then it requires retransmission of lost packets. It
can also lead to the loss of critical information if errors are nor recovered