7 March 2019 Taiz University, YEMEN

• Asynchronous transmission is so named because the

timing of a signal is unimportant. Instead, information
is received and translated by agreed upon patterns.
• In asynchronous transmission, we send 1 start bit (0) at
the beginning and 1 or more stop bits (1s) at the end of
each byte. There may be a gap between bytes.
• Asynchronous here means “asynchronous at the byte
level,” but the bits are still synchronized; their
durations are the same.
• The addition of stop and start bits and the insertion of
gaps into the bit stream make asynchronous
transmission slower than forms of transmission that can
operate without the addition of control information.

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• Synchronous TDM can be inefficient if some
input lines have no data (Empty slots) to send.
• In statistical TDM, slots are dynamically allocated
to improve bandwidth efficiency. Only when an
input line has a slot’s worth of data to send is it
given a slot in the output frame.
• In statistical multiplexing, the number of slots in
each frame is less than the number of input lines.
The multiplexer checks each input line in round-
robin fashion; it allocates a slot for an input line if
the line has data to send; otherwise, it skips the
line and checks the next line.

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• Pervious Example shows a major difference between
slots in synchronous TDM and statistical TDM. An
output slot in synchronous TDM is totally occupied by
data; in statistical TDM, a slot needs to carry data as
well as the address of the destination.
• In statistical multiplexing, there is no fixed relationship
between the inputs and outputs because there are no
preassigned or reserved slots. We need to include the
address of the receiver inside each slot to show where it
is to be delivered.
• The addressing in its simplest form can be n bits to
define N different output lines with n = log2 N. For
example, for eight different output lines, we need a 3-
bit address.

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• Since a slot carries both data and an address in statistical
TDM, the ratio of the data size to address size must be
reasonable to make transmission efficient.
• For example, it would be inefficient to send 1 bit per slot as
data when the address is 3 bits. This would mean an
overhead of 300 percent. In statistical TDM, a block of data
is usually many bytes while the address is just a few bytes.
• In statistical TDM, the capacity of the link is normally less
than the sum of the capacities of each channel.
• The designers of statistical TDM define the capacity of the
link based on the statistics of the load for each channel. If
on average only x percent of the input slots are filled, the
capacity of the link reflects this. Of course, during peak
times, some slots need to wait.

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• The operation of asynchronous TDM is explained with two cases.

Case (i): The Following Figure shows the multiplexing of

asynchronous TDM where there are 5 input lines and of five
only three input channels are sending data.

• This additional bit is attached by the multiplexer and discarded by the

demultiplexer once it has been read. This is called addressing. This causes
the system to become inefficient and additional overhead.

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 Case (ii): The Following Figure shows the
multiplexing of asynchronous TDM where there
are 5 input lines and of five, four channels are
sending data.

• Each frame in the two cases is designed to

combine of three characters of any three available
channels.
Activity: How can calculate the link data rate for these two cases? Find
that with your assumptions and justify that.

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 Synchronous TDM Asynchronous TDM
1. Fixed positional relationship – No fixed positional relationships –
By this advantage, only framing bit This is the disadvantage that for
for each frame is required. each channel, input addressing is
required. This results in additional
overhead.
2. Fixed length time slots. It Variable length time slots. The
requires more time slots for high time slot length can be varied
speed channel. according to the faster data rate of
the channel.
3. Buffer is not required. Buffer is required.

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• Telephone companies implement TDM through a hierarchy of
digital signals, called digital signal (DS) service or digital
hierarchy.
• Data rate: 2 Mbps.
• TDM to assemble 24 or 30 channels.
• This is known as the primary multiplex group.
• It can be used as a building block for larger numbers of
channels in higher-order multiplex system (such PDH and
SDH).
30-channel format (Europ)

24-channel format (USA, and Japan)

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• 24-channel PCM frame format

• Data rate = 8 kHz × (8 × 24 + 1) = 1.544 Mbps

• It is known as DS-1 (or T1)
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• 30-channel PCM frame format

• Data rate = 8 kHz × 8 × 32 = 2.048 Mbps

• It is known as E1
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• Plesiochronous digital hierarchy (PDH) is a
multiplexing technique, allowed for the combining of
slightly non synchronous rates.
• In higher-order multiplex systems, several bit
streams, known as tributaries, are combined by a
multiplexer at each level in the hierarchy.
• There are two standards for PDH:
PDH Standards
European PDH Standard

North American PDH Standard

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• Networks are becoming fully digital, operating synchronously, using
high-capacity optical fiber transmission systems and time-division
switching.
• It is advantageous for the multiplexers used in these networks to be
compatible with the switches used at the network (i.e. they should
synchronous).
• The United States (ANSI) and Europe (ITU-T) have responded by
defining standards that, though independent, are fundamentally
similar and ultimately compatible.
• The ANSI standard is called the Synchronous Optical Network
(SONET).
• The ITU-T standard is called the Synchronous Digital Hierarchy
(SDH).
• SONET/SDH is a synchronous network using synchronous TDM
multiplexing. All clocks in the system are locked to a master.

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• SONET defines a hierarchy of electrical signaling levels
called synchronous transport signals (STSs).
• Each STS level (STS-1 to STS-192) supports a certain
data rate, specified in Mbps as show in the following
Table.
• The corresponding optical signals are called optical
carriers (OCs).
• SDH specifies a similar system called synchronous
transport module (STM).
• STM is intended to be compatible with existing European
hierarchies, such as E lines, and with STS levels. To this
end, the lowest STM level, STM-1, is defined as 155.520
Mbps, which is exactly equal to STS-3 as shown in the
following Table (Next Slid) .

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• SONET/SDH transmission relies on four basic devices:

 STS/STM multiplexers/demultiplexers.  Add/drop multiplexers

 Regenerators.  Terminals.

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 STS/STM Multiplexer/Demultiplexer: STS/STM
MUX/DEMUXs mark the beginning points and
endpoints of a SONET link. They provide the
interface between an electrical tributary network and
the optical network.
 Regenerator: Regenerators extend the length of the
links. A regenerator is a repeater that takes a received
optical signal (OC-n), demodulates it into the
corresponding electric signal (STS-n/STM-n),
regenerates the electric signal, and finally modulates
the electric signal into its correspondent OC-n signal.
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 Add/drop Multiplexer: Add/drop multiplexers allow
insertion and extraction of signals. An add/drop
multiplexer (ADM) can add STSs/STMs coming
from different sources into a given path or can
remove a desired signal from a path and redirect it
without demultiplexing the entire signal.
 Terminals: A terminal is a device that uses the
services of a SONET network. For example, in the
Internet, a terminal can be a router that needs to send
packets to another router at the other side of a
SONET/SDH network.
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• The devices defined in the previous Figure are connected using
sections, lines, and paths.
 Sections: A section is the optical link connecting two
neighbouring devices: multiplexer to multiplexer, multiplexer
to regenerator, or regenerator to regenerator.
 Lines: A line is the portion of the network between two
multiplexers: STS/STM multiplexer to add/drop multiplexer,
two add/drop multiplexers, or two STS/STM multiplexers.
 Paths: A path is the end-to-end portion of the network between
two STS multiplexers. In a simple SONET of two STS
multiplexers linked directly to each other, the section, line, and
path are the same.

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• Each synchronous transfer signal STS-n is composed of 8000
frames. Each frame is a two-dimensional matrix of bytes with
9 rows by 90 × n columns.
• For example, an STS-1 frame is 9 rows by 90 columns (810
bytes), and an STS-3 is 9 rows by 270 columns (2430 bytes).
• The following Figure shows the general format of an STS-1
and an STS-n.

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• One of the interesting points about SONET is that each STS-n signal is
transmitted at a fixed rate of 8000 frames per second.
• For each frame the bytes are transmitted from the left to the right, top to the
bottom.
• For each byte, the bits are transmitted from the most significant to the least
significant (left to right).
• The following Figure shows the order of frame and byte transmission.

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• A SONET frame is a matrix of 9 rows of 90 bytes (octets) each, for a total
of 810 bytes.
• The first three columns of the frame are used for section overhead (SOH)
and line overhead (LOH).
• The rest of the frame is called the synchronous payload envelope (SPE). It
contains user data and path overhead (POH) needed at the user data level.
POH consists of 9 bytes.

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• SOH is recalculated for each SONET device
(regenerators and multiplexers).
• LOH is calculated for each multiplexer (MUX,
DEMUX, or ADM).
• POH is only calculated for end-to-end (at STS
multiplexers).
• In SONET, the data rate of an STS-n signal is
n times the data rate of an STS-1 signal.
• In SONET, the duration of any frame is 125
μs.
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 Examples

1. Find the data rate of an STS-1 signal.

(9) x (90 bytes/frame) x (8 bits/byte) x (8,000 frames/s) = 51,840,000 bps =
51.840 Mbps
2. Find the data rate of an STS-3 signal.
3. What is the duration of an STS-1 frame? STS-3 frame? STS-
n frame?
4. What is the user data rate of an STS-1 frame (without
considering the overheads)?
5. How many DS-1s frames can be loaded by STS–1 payload
(in one frame) to transport it through SONET.
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• Each synchronous transport module STM-n is
composed of 8000 frames. Each frame is a two-
dimensional matrix of bytes with 9 rows by 270 ×
n columns.
• For example, an STM-3 is 9 rows by 270 columns
(2430 bytes). So it has data rate of
9×270 ×8 ×8000=155.520 Mbps.
• For each frame the bytes are transmitted from the
left to the right, top to the bottom.
• For each byte, the bits are transmitted from the
most significant to the least significant (left to
right).
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• A SDH frame is a matrix of
9 rows of 270 bytes each,
for a total of 2430 bytes.
• The first nine columns of
the frame are used for
frame overheads: SOH and
LOH.
• The rest of the frame is
called the synchronous
payload envelope (SPE). It
contains user data and POH
needed at the user data
level. POH consists of 27
bytes for STM-1.
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• In the SDH, the data rate of an STM-n signal is n
times the data rate of an STM-1 signal.
• In the SDH, the duration of any frame is 125 μs.
• Each tributary to the multiplex has its own
payload area, known as a tributary unit (TU). In
North America, a TU is called a virtual tributary
(VT). Each column contains 9 bytes (one from
each row), with each byte having 64 kbps
capacity.
• In the multiplexing process, the bytes from a
tributary are assembled into a container and a
POH is added to form a virtual container (VC).

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 Tutorial
STM-1 contains 63 primary 2-Mbps data streams and
each of them contains 30 time slots for speech.
(a) How many simultaneous calls (64 Kbps) can be
transmitted over a single fiber pair used by the STM-
16 optical system?
(b) What is the number of simultaneous calls if a DWDM
system using a 100-GHz wavelength grid from
1,528.77 nm/196.1 THz to 1,563.86 nm/191.7 THz is
implemented?
(c) The STM-16 signal is transmitted through each optical
channel. What will be the total data rate of the
DWDM system from part (b)?

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• SONET is designed to carry broadband payloads. Current
digital hierarchy data rates (DS-1 to DS-3), however, are lower
than STS-1.
• To make SONET backward-compatible with the current
hierarchy, its frame design includes a system of virtual
tributaries (VTs) (see the following Figure).

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• A virtual tributary is a partial payload that can be
inserted into an STS-1 and combined with other
partial payloads to fill out the frame. Instead of
using all 86 payload columns of an STS-1 frame
for data from one source, we can subdivide the
SPE and call each component a VT.
• Four types of VTs have been defined to
accommodate existing digital hierarchies (see the
following Figure). Notice that the number of
columns allowed for each type of VT can be
determined by doubling the type identification
number (VT1.5 gets three columns,VT2 gets four
columns, etc.).
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• Four types of VTs can be used as follows:
❑ VT1.5 accommodates the U.S. DS-1 service (1.544 Mbps).
❑ VT2 accommodates the European CEPT-1 service (2.048 Mbps).
❑ VT3 accommodates the DS-1C service (fractional DS-1, 3.152 Mbps).
❑ VT6 accommodates the DS-2 service (6.312 Mbps).

• When two or more tributaries are inserted into

a single STS-1 frame, they are interleaved
column by column.

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 Example
VT2 is a frame of 36 bytes that is made up of 4 columns and 9 rows. It is used for
transmission of an European E-1 line (can E-line can carry 30 voice channels). The data rate
of VT2 is
= 36 bytes × 8 bits × 8000 frames/sec
= 2.304 Mbps.
The following Figure shows VT2 framed into STS-1 frame.

• How many number of VT2 containers can transmit over the STS-1 payload?

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