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Digi Comms
Digi Comms
COMMUNICATIONS
Digital signals can be
MANIPULATED more easily
than analog signals. Digital signals can easily be
ENCRYPTED to ensure privacy
(They are easier to multiplex, for
instance.)
Digital
Analog
The block diagram on the top shows the blocks common to all communication
systems 5
We recall the components of a
communication system:
Input transducer: The device that converts a physical
signal from source to an electrical, mechanical or
electromagnetic signal more suitable for
communicating
Transmitter: The device that sends the transduced
signal
Transmission channel: The physical medium on
which the signal is carried
Receiver: The device that recovers the transmitted
signal from the channel
Output transducer: The device that converts the
received signal back into a useful quantity
6
Bandwidth
In this lecture, we will understand more deeply what signal
bandwidth is, what the meaning of channel bandwidth to a
communications engineer is, and what the limitations on
information rate are
Signal bandwidth:
We can divide signals into two categories: The pure tone signal (the
sinusoidal wave, consisting of one frequency component), and complex
signals that are composed of several components, or sinusoids of various
frequencies.
-3 -3
T=1x10 s f=1/1x10
=1000Hz=1 kHz
0 1 t (ms)
Pure signal
The bandwidth of a signal composed of components of various frequencies (complex
signal) is the difference between its highest and lowest frequency components, and is
expressed in Hertz (Hz), the same as frequency
For example, a square wave may be constructed by adding sine waves of various
frequencies:
Pure tone
(ms)
Since voice signals are also
composed of several
components (pure tones) of
various frequencies, the Male voice
bandwidth of a voice signal is
taken to be the difference 3000 Hz frequency
between the highest and lowest component
frequencies which are 3000 Hz
and (close to) 0 Hz
Although other frequency
components above 3000 Hz
exist, (they are more prominent
in the male voice), an
acceptable degradation of
voice quality is achieved by
disregarding the higher
frequency components,
accepting the 3kHz bandwidth Female voice
as a standard for voice 3000 Hz frequency
communications component
channel bandwidth:
The bandwidth of a channel (medium) is defined to be the range of
frequencies that the medium can support. Bandwidth is measured
in Hz
With each transmission medium, there is a frequency range of
electromagnetic waves that can be transmitted:
Twisted pair: 0 to 109 Hz (Bandwidth : 109 Hz)
Increasing Coax cable: 0 to 1010 Hz (Bandwidth : 1010 Hz)
bandwidth Optical fiber: 1014 to 1016 Hz (Bandwidth : 1016 -1014 = 9.9x1015 Hz)
Consider an extremely noisy channel in which the value of the signal-to-noise ratio
is almost zero. In other words, the noise is so strong that the signal is faint. For
this channel the capacity C is calculated as
This means that the capacity of this channel is zero regardless of the bandwidth.
In other words, we cannot receive any data through this channel.
Example #2
We can calculate the theoretical highest bit rate of a regular telephone line. A
telephone line normally has a bandwidth of 3000. The signal-to-noise ratio is
usually 3162. For this channel the capacity is calculated as
This means that the highest bit rate for a telephone line is 34.860 kbps. If we want
to send data faster than this, we can either increase the bandwidth of the line or
improve the signal-to-noise ratio.
Example #3
The signal-to-noise ratio is often given in decibels. Assume that SNRdB = 36 and
the channel bandwidth is 2 MHz. The theoretical channel capacity can be
calculated as
For practical purposes, when the SNR is very high, we can assume that SNR + 1
is almost the same as SNR. In these cases, the theoretical channel capacity can
be simplified to
For example, we can calculate the theoretical capacity of the previous example as
Seatwork #1:
1.We have a channel with a 1-MHz bandwidth. The SNR for this channel is 63.
What are the appropriate bit rate and signal level?
1.