Chapter 1

Digital Communications
Fundamentals

9/9/2013

1. Digital Communication Fundamentals

1.1 Communication Systems (Fig 1.1)
Mobile any terminal that moves rapidly.
Portable hand held terminal that moves slowly.
Base Station (BS) a station that is fixed and
communicates with the mobile.
Classes of transmission systems (Fig 1.2)
Simplex one way communication, Eg. Paging,
Broadcast etc.
Half duplex two way communication, either
transmit or receive at any instant, Eg. Walkie
Talkie
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Fig 1.1
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Full Duplex
Both way communication possible at the same
time over two channels.
Full Duplex achieved by

Having two physical channels.

Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD).
Time Division Duplexing (TDD).

FDD

Simultaneous transmission over two carrier

frequencies and used mostly in analog
systems.
Requires two antennas (BS).

Mobiles use a single antenna.

TDD

Channel is time shared (uses time slots).

Single channel, simultaneous
transmission and reception not possible.
A channel transmitting at higher data rates
appears to be transmitting and receiving
data simultaneously.
Used in digital communication systems
and is prone to timing error and jitter.

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1.2 Digital Mobile Systems

Figure 1.2 A typical

Communication System

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 Imbedding error correction protocols in data terminals

insures data fidelity.
Example: ARQ (Automatic Repeat Request).
1.3 Problems associated with MCS

Fading
Occurs due to motion.
Losses could be as high as tens of dBs.
Fading rate proportional to the Carrier
Frequency and speed of the mobile.

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At high data rates, frequency selective fading

causes higher BER and Inter Symbol
Interference (ISI).
Noise a general problem encountered in
communication channels resulting in higher BER.
can be reduced by error correction schemes.
Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) is
assumed.
Noise, fading, path loss complicate analysis.
Requires separate circuits handle each.

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1.4. Modulation and Coding requirements

a. Maximize transmission bit rates R
b. Minimize error probability,PB Pe .
c. Minimize power - minimize bit energy to noise
power spectral density,Eb / N 0 .
d. Minimize system BW.
e. Maximize system utilization.
f. Minimize system complexity, cost and load.

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Goals (a) contradicts (d) and (b) contradicts (c).

Maximizing rate requires larger BW.

Minimizing BER requires maximizing
power.
Trade offs required.

Theoretical considerations that necessitate

trade offs are:
Nyquist theoretical BW.
Shannon capacity theorem.
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1.5 Definitions
Eb
1.5.1 Energy per bit to Noise Power SD, N

Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) defined as the

ratio of average signal power to average noise
power.
Eb
N 0 - normalized version of SNR, where Eb is
the energy per bit and N0 is the noise power
spectral density.

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1.5.2 Nyquist minimum BW

Minimum BW required to transmit and detect

Rs

symbols without ISI is

Rs
Hz
2

Effective number of symbols that can be

transmitted per second per Hertz is 2.

In practice the BW is expanded by 10% to

40%.

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BW efficiency represents the measure of data

throughput per hertz of BW.

Units are bits/s/Hz.

Shows how efficiently modulation (signaling)

technique utilizes BW.

k 6
M 64 PAM
Theoretical max BW efficiency with out ISI
2 symbols / s / Hz (without ISI)
BWE 12bps / s / Hz
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Example
16ary PSK with a data rate of 9600 bps.

2k

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2k

Rs

4 bits / symbol

Rbits / s
4 bits / symbol
9600
4

2400 symbols / s
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1.5.3 Shannons capacity theorem

The capacity of a channel in the presence
of AWGN is a function of average received
signal power.

W log2 1

S
N

1.3

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S is the signal power, N is the noise power and

W is the BW.
Eqn. shows that it is possible to transmit
information over a noisy channel at a rate
R C with a small probability of error using
any coding scheme.
For R C there is no coding scheme that can
achieve an arbitrarily small error probability.
S, W and N set a limit on the rate of information
transmission and not on error probability.
Fig 1.3 shows a bound for achievable
performance for practical systems.
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Unattainable

Physical Systems

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1.5.5 Entropy (H)

Defined as the average amount of information
per source output.
n

pi log2 pi

1.7

i 1

pi is the probability of the ith output and

H in the case of two sources having

probabilities p and q = (1-p) is

pi

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p log2 p

q log2 q

1.8

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1.5.6 Bandwidth
BW-Range of positive frequencies over
which signal exists
Null to Null BW Range of positive
frequencies within the main lobe
3-db BW range of positive frequencies
from the maximum to the frequency where
the magnitude drops to 1/2 its peak value.

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