CHAPTER - 2 T 17

DATA COMMUNICATION MEDIA

The most basic consideration in data communication is the media through which the transmission will take place. When designing a communications network it is necessary to give much thought to the selection of data transmission media. The earliest data transmissions used the public telephone exchange and multicore cable or frequency division multiplexing or coaxial cables for trunk connections. Microwave links carrying FDM analog transmission were also used. More recently time division multiplexed trunks are using twisted-pair cables, digital fibre optic links or satellite links. 2.1 Twisted Pair Cable:

This type of cable consists of two insulated conductors twisted together to give a better characteristic impedance and immunity to electromagnetic induction by increasing the coupling between the two wires. Twisting f wires also reduces radiation and cross talk between pairs in a cable. Twisted pair cable is commonly used to connect telephone subscribers to the local exchange. Loading coils are added to analog voice acts to make the attenuation constant over the VF range but these must be removed to permit high speed data transmission. When several electrical conductors or pairs of wires are required, it is common to incorporate these in a single multicore cable with an overall screen to reduce interference from external sources. To reduce the crosstalk between cores and to permit higher data rates, the design of multicore cable attempts to minimize intercore capacitance. But this cable is expensive Moreover fault in one core is hard to detect. 2.2 Coaxial Cable:

High frequency electrical current flows in the outer skin of a conductor, making twisted pair and multicore cables inefficient. This skin effect in metal conductors increases attenuation with the square root of frequency. A coaxial cable surrounds the inner conductor with a dielectric such as polyethylene and a coaxial tube or solid or braided metal surrounds the dielectric. Coaxial cable is used for high speed data transmission over distances of several kilometers. Electrical interference is extremely low, if the outer screen has no gaps. Baseband signals may be transmitted at rates over 10M bits/sec. For about a kilometer. Much larger bandwidths and distances may be achieved by using modulated base band transmission. In broadband mode digital signals are modulated into a sinusoidal R.F. of upto 400 MHz. Broadband mode is immune to low frequency interference. Base band transmission requires a solid, continues outer screen or double screening to minimize interference. All coaxial cables are efficient electrical transmission lines.

2.3

Fibre Optic Cable:

This cable core may be made from glass or plastic (polymer). An optical fibre consists of a glass or plastic more surrounded by a cladding made of a similar material but with lower refractive index. The core transmits the light while the change in refractive index between the core and the cladding causes total internal reflection, thus minimizing the amount of light leaking from the fibre. Stepped index fibres have an abrupt change between the refractive index of the core and the cladding and graded index fibre have a gradual parabolic change in refractive index between the centre of the core and the core-cladding boundary. Light propagate down the fibre in two ways-monomode and multimode. Monomode has only one propagation path along the length of the core giving a high bandwidth. To minimize the number of reflections from the core edges, the core should be as small as possible. Difficulties in fabricating and jointing monomode fibres resulted in multimode fibres being development. Multimode fibres have a larger core diameter and there are many propagation paths, reflecting from the edges of the core. This results in pulse dispersion, when the elements of a pulse arrive at different times after undergoing different nos. of internal reflections, resulting in reduced data transmission rates. The light source must be selected to emit a wavelength of light which experiences minimum attenuation in the fibre used Polymer fibre has its lowest attenuation in the visible region of the spectrum with windows at 0.65 and 0.57. Glass fibre has its minimum attenuation windows at about 1.2-1.3 and 1.5 to 1.6. GaAsP sources have a typical power output of 100 and is used primarily on short links. Their life is greater than 106 hours. GaAIAs gives about 10 power and has a life of greater than 20,000 hours. High performance systems use InP/GaInASP laser diodes generating coherent light at 1.3. Light detectors used for the larger infra-red wavelengths include germanium avalanche photodiode APO) but less noisy materials such as InGaAS, InGaAP and AIGaAsSb are being developed for use in APD. Alternatively for shorter wavelengths, silicon pin photodiodes and silicon APDs are used. 2.4 Free Space Optical Link:

Hence, free space substitutes for the optical fibre. The optical transmitter produces a narrow beam emitted aiming at a sensor, which may be located at a distance upto several Kilometres with a direct line of sight. This system is a high bandwidth alternative to local microwave links or cable. Performance of optical links may be impaired due to heavy rain or fog but they are immune to electrical interference. Free space links are available for voice channels and data channels upto 45Mb/s and work reliably upto 2 Km. beyond that, a MW link is preferable. Silicon photodiodes and GaAIAs lasers form an efficient combination due to the matching of their optical spectra. 2.5 Microwave Link:

A direct line of sight is needed for transmission in MW and so it is necessary to locate the MW antenna on high towers or on top of the hills. Earlier FEM was being used in MW, but now a days digital MW is to take over the analog version. A 140Mb/s MW data link may provide 1920 voice channels or various combination of 2Mb/s TDM channels.

Propagation problems encountered on MW links include heavy rain causing attenuation up to 10dB/Km and multi path fading, causing distortion of the received signal. 2.6 Satellite Relay:

The communication satellites now use normally a geostationary orbit, 22,335 miles above the equator, with a speed coinciding with the earths rotation to make the satellite appear almost stationary. The angular and frequency resolution capabilities of ground stations made it necessary to separate satellites operating on the same microwave band by 40 of are, though USA has reduced the arc to 20. The development of small inexpensive ground stations and new generation of advanced communications satellite has resulted in a number of satellite based data networks being set up for long distance communications. The limitations of the satellite communication are: Round trip delay of about 0.5 Sec. Echo Problem Life span of satellites Distance of ground station from user Encryption needed for privacy and Solar eclipse and sun transmits.

The frequency of the up-link and down-link may be either in C band(4/6 GHz) or Ku band (11/14 GHz). Separate frequencies permit full duplex operation and it is conventional to use a higher freq. Up-link in the same band as the down-link. More power is therefore available from the ground station at the higher frequency where more power is required to overcome atmospheric attenuation. FDMA has been used by most communication satellites but TDMA is becoming popular because more channels may be accommodated in the same bandwidth, transmitter output power is higher and there is no intermodulation interference as may be found with TDMA. The general characteristics of satellite communications, from the point of view of data communications, are Long Loop delay Cost relatively independent of distance High speed Broadcast capability Security needed and High reliability.

The long loop delay, which can be more than 500 sec. For round trip delay is the most important characteristic and can be avoided by using full duplex protocols. The cost factor is independent of the location of the each station. The speed with which satellite communication works depends on the transponders. Data security, without data encryption is very low because any earth station in the satellites view can get the signal. But due to this very reason, the broadcast capability is enormous. As for reliability, the satellites very rarely fails after launched in orbit.

A communication network may be formed by a series of links based on different types of media. So, the performance of the network depends on the weakest segment. Equalizing modems can enhance the line performances. The price of long haul lines is loss than the short haul type on the basis of cost per kilometer. Use of mostly physical lines for short-haul lines causes the cost to be more. In switched lines, the connection time is long and leased line will be preferable if high speed on line data is to be transferred. Again, if the lines do not carry data for most of the times, they can be shared. The line capacity can be increased by using multiplexers or concentrators and multiple users can use sub group bit streams. A new concept is Value Added Network (VAN) where the owner can lease lines and modems and can put other users together in the network. ***