COMSATS Fall 2014 (Rev. 1.

0)

Principles of Communication Systems (PCS)

EEE 351

Lecture # 10
Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) II
COMSATS PCS
Quantization
• Quantization is a process of
mapping a large (usually infinite)
set of input values to a smaller set
of countable values.
• The basic principle used in
quantization is rounding the input
values to predefined levels.
• It is inherently an irreversible
process fundamentally because of
the fact that a same output value
is shared by multiple input values.
• A uniform/linear quantizer divides
the entire input signal range into
equal number of levels known as
quantization levels denoted by ‘L’.
• Most of the signals to be quantized
have both positive and negative
values so quantizer also assumes
the positive and negative values.
• The step size between the
quantization levels is known as
quantile interval (denoted as ‘q’).
COMSATS PCS

Quantization

Bernard Sklar, Digital Communications- Fundamentals and Applications, 2nd Edition.

COMSATS PCS

Quantization

Bernard Sklar, Digital Communications- Fundamentals and Applications, 2nd Edition.

COMSATS PCS

Quantization Noise
• Quantization can be referred to as • For uniform quantization,
‘rounding off’ which quantization error (e) is uniformly
approximates/rounds off an input distributed and can be
value to a predefined level. represented as a uniform
probability density function.
• Due to this rounding off, some
useful information is lost which in • The average quantization noise
turn causes noise/distortion in the power equal to its variance, σ2 .
output signal. This noise is know
as ‘Quantization Noise’. • Calculate signal to quantization
noise power and observe the
• Quantization noise is inversely relationship between the
proportional to the number of quantization levels and noise.
quantization levels.
COMSATS PCS

Uniform Quantization
• The quantizer in which all the • If the SNR is calculated for
quantile intervals are equal is known uniform quantizer, the SNR for
as the ‘Uniform Quantization’. low amplitudes signals is poor as
compared to the high amplitude
• For a uniform quantizer, the signals. This is because of the
quantization noise is equal for all the uniform distribution of the noise
levels. across all quantization levels.

• For speech signals, low volume

(Amplitude) signals occur for 50 % of
the time. Usually the signal
amplitudes are less than ¼ of the
RMS value. Only 15% of the time,
the signal value exceed the RMS
value.

Bernard Sklar, Digital Communications- Fundamentals and Applications, 2nd Edition.

COMSATS PCS

Non-Uniform Quantization
• In order to prevent the poor signal to quantization noise ratio, non-uniform
quantization is used.

• In non-uniform quantization, the quantization levels for low amplitude speech signals
are finely distributed which improves the SNR by reducing the quantization noise.

Bernard Sklar, Digital Communications- Fundamentals and Applications, 2nd Edition.

COMSATS PCS

Non-Uniform Quantization
• One way to perform the non- • This compression and expansion
uniform quantization is by first characteristics pair is known as
distorting the input signal with ‘Companding’.
logarithmic compression and
then using the uniform • There are two types of
quantization. companding laws known as ‘µ-
Law’ and ‘A-Law’.
• At the receiver, the inverse • ‘µ- Law’ and ‘A-Law’?
compression characteristics
known as expansion is applied to
recover the signal.
COMSATS PCS

Non-Uniform Quantization

Bernard Sklar, Digital Communications- Fundamentals and Applications, 2nd Edition.

COMSATS PCS

Encoding

Bernard Sklar, Digital Communications- Fundamentals and Applications, 2nd Edition.

COMSATS PCS

References
[1] Bernard Sklar, Digital Communications- Fundamentals and Applications, 2nd
Edition.
[2] Wikipedia [Online] Wikimedia Foundation. [Cited 06 ,03,2014]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantization_(signal_processing)