ADVANCED COMMUNICATION

SYSTEMS
Wireless communication systems,
Optical communication systems
 Recap..
• Time and frequency domain
• Introduction to communication systems
• Analog and digital communication systems
 In this lecture..
• Wireless communication
• Optical communication
What is Wireless Communication?

• Transmitting / receiving voice and data using

electromagnetic waves in open space

– The information from sender to receiver is

carried over a well defined frequency band
(channel)
– Each channel has a fixed frequency, bandwidth
and Capacity (bit rate).
– Different channels can be used to transmit
information in parallel and independently.

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 A Simplified Wireless Communication
System Representation Antenna

Information to be Power
Coding Modulator
Transmitted amplifier
(voice, data, multimedia)

Carrier
Antenna

Information
Received
(voice, data, Decoding Demodulator LNA
multimedia)

Carrier
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1.Types of Wireless
commuication (i)
Major Types

Radio Transmission
Microwave Transmission

Infrared and Millimeter Waves

Light wave Transmission

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 Radio Transmission
– Easily generated,
– Omnidirectionally travel long distances,
– Easily penetrate buildings

– Problems :

• Frequency dependent

• Relative low bandwidth for data communication

• Tightly licensed by government

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 Microwave Transmission
– Widely used for long distance communication
– Gives a high S/N ratio,
– Relatively inexpensive

Problems:

• Do not pass through buildings well

• Weather and frequency dependent

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 Infrared and Millimeter Waves

– Widely used for short range communication

Problems:

– Unable to pass through solid objects

– Used for indoor wireless LANs, not for outdoors

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 Lightwave Transmission

– Unguided optical signal, such as laser

– Connect two LANs on two buildings via laser mounted
on their roofs
– Unidirectional, easy to install, don’t require license

Problems:

• Unable to penetrate rain or thick fog

• Laser beam can be easily diverted by turbulent air

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 Example
• Assume a spectrum of 120 KHz is allocated
over a base frequency for communication
between stations A and B
• Each channel occupies 40 KHz

Channel 1( b - b+40)

Station A Channel 2 (b+40 – b +80 ) Station B

Channel 3 ( b+80 - b+120)

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 Some
facts

• Different frequencies get attenuated

differently
• Air is a selector
• Rain, fog, dust ↑ attenuation ↑ distance↓
• Freq. ↑ attenuation ↑ distance↓
• Voice communication
• Lower frequecies were ok
• Low BW requirements
• Data communication (mms, e-mail)
• Large BW requirements

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 Typical Frequencies
• FM Radio - 88 MHz
• TV Broadcast - 200 MHz
• GSM phones - 900 MHz
• GPS - 1.2GHz
• Bluetooth - 2.4 GHz Θ
• WiFi -2.4 GHz

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MSC PSTN Cells
Base stations
 Frequency Reuse : The Need
• Fixed telephone network runs wires to every house
hold.
• Suppose we give every household their own
allocation of radio spectrum for analog speech of 4
kHz bandwidth.
• 12.5 million households x 4 kHz = 50 GHz !
• Clearly impractical
– No other services possible using radio transmission
– Most of the spectrum unused most of the time
 Frequency Reuse (1)
• Cellular radio systems rely on intelligent
allocation and reuse of channels throughout
the coverage area.
• Each base station is allocated a group of radio
channels to be used within the small
geographic area of its cell
• Neighbouring base stations are given different
channel allocation from each other.
 Frequency Reuse (2)
• By design of antennas,
• the area is limited within the cell, and
• the same group of frequencies is reused to cover
another cell separated by a large enough distance
• to keep co-channel interference within limits.
• The design procedure of allocating channel
groups for all of the cellular BS within a system is
called Frequency Reuse or Frequency Planning.
 Terminology
• Cluster size : The N cells which collectively use
the complete set of available frequency is
called the cluster size.
• Co-channel cell : The set of cells using the
same set of frequencies as the target cell.
• Interference tier : A set of co-channel cells at
the same distance from the reference cell is
called an interference tier.
• The set of closest co-channel cells is call the first tier.
• There is always 6 co-channel cells in the first tier.
 Examples of Frequency Reuse

COCHANNEL

Cells with same colour use same frequency

Here cluster size is 7 and reuse factor is 1/7
 Signal Strength - Cell Shape (1)
Signal strength
(in dB)

Cell i Cell j
-60 -60
-70 -70
-80 -80
-90
-90 -100
-100

Select cell i on left of boundary Select cell j on right of boundary

Ideal boundary
 WHY Wireless
Communication?

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WHY Wireless Communication? (1 )

• Freedom from wires

– No cost of installing wires or rewiring
– No bunches of wires running here and there
• Driving force for the next communication standards 802.15.3 e.g.
UWB
– Auto magical instantaneous communication without physical
connection setup, e.g. Bluetooth, WiFi
• Global Coverage
– Communications can reach where wiring is infeasible, costly,
e.g.
• rural areas,
• old buildings,
• battlefield,
• vehicles,
• outer space (through communication satellites) ΘΘ

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 WHY Wireless Communication (2)

• Stay Connected
– Roaming allows flexibility to stay connected anywhere and
any time
– Rapidly growing market attests to public need for mobility
and uninterrupted access
• Flexibility
– Services reach you wherever you go (Mobility). e.g. you
don’t have to go to your lab to check your mail
– Connect to multiple devices simultaneously (no physical
connection required) Θ

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WHY Wireless Communication? (3)
• Increasing dependence on telecommunication
services for business and personal reasons
• Consumers and businesses are willing to pay
for it

Basic mantra - stay connected anywhere,

anytime

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 Wireless vs Mobile

Note:
• Wireless does not necessarily mean
mobile
• Wireless system maybe
– Fixed (e.g. Metropolitan Area Network)
– Portable (e.g. wireless interaction between
TV and VCR)
– Mobile (e.g. mobile phone).

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 Fiber Optics
Fiber-optic cables carry information between two places
using entirely optical (light-based) technology.
 What is fiber optics?

• We're used to the idea of information traveling

in different ways.
• When we speak into a landline telephone, a wire
cable carries the sounds from our voice into a
socket in the wall, where another cable takes it
to the local telephone exchange.
•  Cellphones work a different way: they send and
receive information using invisible radio waves—
a technology called wireless because it uses no
cables.
 What is fiber optics?
• Fiber optics works a third way.
• It sends information coded in a beam of  light down
a glass or plastic pipe.
• It was originally developed for endoscopes in the
1950s to help doctors see inside the human body
without having to cut it open first.

• In the 1960s, engineers found a way of using the

same technology to transmit telephone calls at the
speed of light (186,000 miles or 300,000 km per
second).
 Optical technology
• A fiber-optic cable is made up of incredibly thin strands of
glass or plastic known as optical fibers
• One cable can have as few as two strands or as many as
several hundred.
• Each strand is less than a tenth as thick as a human hair and
can carry something like 25,000 telephone calls,
• An entire fiber-optic cable can easily carry several million
calls.
 Optical technology
• Suppose you wanted to send information from your  computer to a
friend's house down the street using fiber optics.
• You could hook your computer up to a laser.
• It would convert electrical information from the computer into a
series of light pulses.
• Then you'd fire the laser down the fiber-optic cable.
• After traveling down the cable, the light beams would emerge at the
other end.
• Your friend would need a photoelectric cell (light-detecting
component) to turn the pulses of light back into electrical
information his or her computer could understand.

• So the whole apparatus would be like a really neat, hi-tech version

of the kind of telephone you can make out of two baked-bean cans
and a length of string!
 How fiber-optics works
• Light travels down a fiber-optic cable by bouncing
repeatedly off the walls.
• Each tiny photon (particle of light) bounces down
the pipe.
• Now you might expect a beam of light, traveling in a
clear glass pipe, simply to leak out of the edges.
• But if light hits glass at a really shallow angle (less
than 42 degrees), it reflects back in again—as
though the glass were really a mirror.
• This phenomenon is called total internal reflection.
• It's one of the things that keeps light inside the
pipe.
• The other thing that keeps light in the pipe is the structure of
the cable, which is made up of two separate parts.
• The main part of the cable—in the middle—is called
the core and that's the bit the light travels through.
• Wrapped around the outside of the core is another layer of
glass called the cladding.
• The cladding's job is to keep the light signals inside the core.
• It can do this because it is made of a different type of glass
to the core.
• More technically, the cladding has a lower refractive index.
Types of fiber-optic cables
 Types of fiber-optic cables
• Optical fibers carry light signals down them in what are
called modes.
• It means different ways of traveling
• Mode is simply the path that a light beam follows
down the fiber.
• One mode is to go straight down the middle of the
fiber.
• Another is to bounce down the fiber at a shallow angle.
• Other modes involve bouncing down the fiber at other
angles, more or less steep.
 Types of fiber-optic cables

• The simplest type of optical fiber is called single-

mode.
– It has a very thin core about 5-10 microns (millionths
of a meter) in diameter.
– All signals travel straight down the middle without
bouncing off the edges (red line in diagram).
– Cable TV, Internet, and telephone signals are
generally carried by single-mode fibers, wrapped
together into a huge bundle.
– Cables like this can send information over 100 km.
 Types of fiber-optic cables
• Another type of fiber-optic cable is called multi-mode.
– Each optical fiber in a multi-mode cable is about 10 times bigger
than one in a single-mode cable.
– This means light beams can travel through the core by following
a variety of different paths (purple, green, and blue lines)
• —in other words, in multiple different modes.

– Multi-mode cables can send information only over

relatively short distances
– are used (among other things) to link computer networks
 together.
• Even thicker fibers are used in a medical tool called a gastroscope (a
type of endoscope), which doctors poke down someone's throat for
detecting illnesses inside their stomach.
• A gastroscope is a thick fiber-optic cable consisting of many optical
fibers.
• At the top end of a gastroscope, there is an eyepiece and a lamp.
• The lamp shines its light down one part of the cable into the
patient's stomach.
• When the light reaches the stomach, it reflects off the stomach walls
into a lens at the bottom of the cable.
• Then it travels back up another part of the cable into the doctor's
eyepiece.
• Other types of endoscopes work the same way and can be used to
inspect different parts of the body.
• An industrial version of the tool, called a fiberscope, which can be
used to examine things like inaccessible pieces of machinery in 
airplane engines
 Optical Communication Systems

• Communication systems with light as the carrier

and optical fiber as communication medium
• Optical fiber is used to contain and guide light
waves
– Typically made of glass or plastic
– Propagation of light in atmosphere is impractical
• This is similar to cable guiding electromagnetic waves
• Capacity comparison
– Microwave at 10 GHz
– Light at 100 Tera Hz (1014 )
• Optical fiber installation
• Measured in fiber sheath-miles (or fiber miles)
• Example: we install 3 fiber cable within 10 mile long route;
each fiber cable has 20 fibers  we have 600 fiber miles
30 cables
• Currently more than 1.5 billion kilometers of optical fiber is
deployed around the world
• The circumference of earth is 40,000 Km!
 Optical Fiber: Advantages
• Capacity: much wider bandwidth
(10 GHz)
• Crosstalk immunity
• Immunity to static interference
– Lightening
– Electric motor
– Florescent light
• Higher environment immunity
– Weather, temperature, etc.
 Optical Fiber: Advantages

• Safety: Fiber is non-metalic

– No explosion, no chock
• Longer lasting
• Security: tapping is difficult
• Economics: Fewer repeaters
– Low transmission loss (dB/km)
– Fewer repeaters
– Less cable
Remember: Fiber is non-conductive
Hence, change of magnetic field has
No impact!
 Disadvantages
• Higher initial cost in installation
• Interfacing cost
• Strength
– Lower tensile strength
• Remote electric power
• More expensive to repair/maintain
– Tools: Specialized and sophisticated
 Light Spectrum
• Light frequency is
divided into three
general bands
• Remember:
– When dealing with light
we use wavelength:
• l=c/f
• c=300E6 m/sec
 Optical Fiber Architecture
TX, RX, and Fiber Link
Transmitter
Input Coder or Light Source-to-Fiber
Signal Converter Source Interface

Fiber-optic Cable

Fiber-to-light Light Amplifier/Shaper Output

Interface Detector Decoder
Receiver
 Optical Fiber Architecture –
Components
Input Coder or Light Source-to-Fiber
• Light source: Signal Converter Source Interface

– Amount of light emitted is Fiber-optic Cable

proportional to the drive Fiber-to-light Light Amplifier/Shaper Output

current Interface Detector

Receiver
Decoder

– Two common types:

• LED (Light Emitting Diode)  Light detector:
• ILD (Injection Laser Diode)  PIN (p-type-intrinsic-n-type)
• Source–to-fiber-coupler (similar  APD (avalanche photo diode)
to a lens):  Both convert light energy into current
– A mechanical interface to
couple the light emitted by the
source into the optical fiber
 Light Sources (more details…)
• Light-Emitting Diodes (LED)
– made from material such as AlGaAs or GaAsP
– light is emitted when electrons and holes recombine
– either surface emitting or edge emitting
• Injection Laser Diodes (ILD)
– similar in construction as LED except ends are highly polished to
reflect photons back & forth
• LET US GIVE WAY TO AN AMBULANCE.