Lecture 1

BASICS OF COMMUNICATION
SYSTEMS

Introduction
Electronic Communication
The transmission, reception, and processing of
information with the use of electronic circuits

Information
Knowledge or intelligence that is communicated
(i.e., transmitted or received) between two or
more points

Introduction
Digital Modulation
The transmittal of digitally modulated analog
signals (carriers) between two or more points in a
communications systems
Sometimes referred to as digital radio because
digitally modulated signals can be propagated
through Earths atmosphere and used in wireless
communications systems

Introduction
Digital Communications
Include systems where relatively high-frequency
analog carriers are modulated by relatively lowfrequency digital signals (digital radio) and
systems involving the transmission of digital
pulses (digital transmission)

Introduction

ASK

FSK

QAM

PSK

Applications
1

Relatively low-speed voice-band data communications

modems such as those found in most personal computers

High-speed data transmission systems, such as broadband

digital subscriber lines (DSL)

Digital microwave and satellite communications systems

Cellular telephone Personal Communications Systems (PCS)

Basic Telecommunication System

Attenuation

Source

Transducer

Transducer

Sink

Transmission
Medium

In an electrical communication system, at the transmitting side, a transducer converts

the real life information into an electrical signal. At the receiving side, a transducer
converts the electrical signal back into real-life information

Basic Telecommunication System

NOISE!!!

Source

Transducer

Transducer

Sink

Transmission
Medium

Note: As the electrical signal passes through the transmission medium, the signal gets
attenuated. In addition, the transmission medium introduces noise and, as a result,
the signal gets distorted.

Basic Telecommunication System

The objective of designing a communication

system is to reproduce the electrical signal at
the receiving end with minimal distortion.

Basic Telecommunication System

Channel

RS 232 Port

RS 232 Port

Note: The serial ports of two computers can be connected directly using a
copper cable. However, due to the signal attenuation, the distance cannot be
more than 100 meters.

Basic Telecommunication System

Two computers can communicate with each other through the telephone network,
using a modem at each end. The modem converts the digital signals generated by the
computer into analog form for transmission over the medium at the transmitting end
and the reverse at the receiving end.

Basic Telecommunication System

Source

Baseband
Signal
Processing

Medium
Access
Processing

Transmitter
Medium

(a) Transmitting Side

Sink

Baseband
Signal
Processing

Decoding of
Data

(a) Receiving Side

Receiver

Basic Telecommunication System

In the case of a radio communication system
for broadcasting audio programs, the
electrical signal is transformed into a highfrequency signal and sent through the air
(free space). A radio transmitter is used to do
this. A reverse of this transformation
converting the high-frequency signal into an
audio signal is performed at the receiving
station. Since it is a broadcasting system,
many receivers receive the information.

Basic Telecommunication System

In a mobile communication system, a radio
channel has to be shared by a number of
users. Each user has to use the radio channel
for a short time during which he has to
transmit his data and then wait for his next
turn. This mechanism of sharing the channel is
known as multiple access.

Basic Telecommunication System

Depending on the type of communication, the distance to be covered, etc., a
communication system will consist of a number of elements, each element carrying out
a specific function. Some important elements are:
1

Multiplexer

Multiple access

Error detection and correction

Source coding

Signaling

Basic Telecommunication System

Note:
Two voice signals cannot be mixed directly
because it will not be possible to separate
them at the receiving end. The two voice
signals can be transformed into different
frequencies to combine them and send
over the medium.

Types of Communication
1

Point-to-point communication

Point-to-multipoint communication

Broadcasting

Simplex communication

Half-duplex communication

Full-duplex communication

Transmission Impairments
1

Attenuation
The amplitude of the signal wave decreases as the signal travels through
the medium.

Delay distortion
Occurs as a result of different frequency components arriving at different
times in the guided media such as copper wire or coaxial cable

Noise
Thermal noise, intermodulation, crosstalk, impulse noise

Transmission Impairments

Thermal Noise occurs due to the thermal

agitation of electrons in a conductor. (white
noise), N = kTB
Intermodulation Noise When two signals of
different frequencies are sent through the
medium, due to nonlinearity of the
transmitters, frequency components such as f1
+ f2 and f1 f2 are produced, which are
unwanted components and need to be filtered
out.

Transmission Impairments
Crosstalk Unwanted coupling between signal
paths
Impulse Noise occurs due to external
electromagnetic disturbances such as
lightning. This also causes burst of errors.

Analog Versus Digital Transmission

Analog
Communication

Digital
Communication

The signal, whose amplitude varies

continuously, is transmitted over
the medium.

1s and 0s are transmitted as voltage

pulses. So, even if the pulse s distorted
due to noise, it is not very difficult to
detect the pulses at the receiving end.

Reproducing the analog signal at

the receiving end is very difficult
due to transmission impairments

Much more immune to noise

Advantages of Digital Transmission

More reliable transmission
Because only discrimination between ones and zeros is required

Less costly implementation

Because of the advances in digital logic chips

Ease of combining various types of signals (voice, video,

etc.,)

Ease of developing secure communication systems

Questions:
1. What are the advantages of digital
communication over analog communication?
2. Explain the different types of communication
systems.
3. What are the different types of transmission
impairments?
4. What is multiplexing?
5. What is signaling?

Lecture 2

INFORMATION THEORY

Claude Shannon
-Laid the foundation of information
theory in 1948. His paper A
Mathematical
Theory
of
Communication published in Bell
System Technical Journal is the basis
for the entire telecommunications
developments that have taken place
during the last five decades. A good
understanding of the concepts
proposed by Shannon is a must for
every budding telecommunication
professional.

Requirements of a Communication
System
The requirement of a communication system is to transmit
the information from the source to the sink without errors,
in spite of the fact that noise is always introduced in the
communication medium.

The Communication System

Channel
Information
Source

Transmitter

Receiver

Noise
Source

Generic Communication System

Information
Sink

Symbols Produced

Bit stream produced

Bit stream received

In a digital communication system, due to the effect of noise, errors are introduced.
As a result, 1 may become a 0 and 0 may become a 1.

Information
Source

Source
Encoder

Channel
Encoder

Modulator

Modulating Signal

Modulated
Signal

Demodulating Signal

Information
Sink

Source
Decoder

Channel
Decoder

Demodulator

Generic Communication System as proposed by Shannon

Explanation of Each Block

Information Source: Produces the symbols

Source encoder: converts the signal produced

by the information source into a data stream
Channel Encoder: add bits in the sourceencoded data
Modulation: process of transforming the
signal
Demodulator: performs the inverse operation
of the modulator

Explanation of Each Block

Channel Decoder: analyzes the
received bit stream and
detects and corrects the error

Source Decoder: converts the

bit stream into the actual
information
Information Sink: absorbs the
information

Types of Source Encoding

Source encoding is done to reduce the
redundancy in the signal.
1. Lossless coding
2. Lossy coding
The compression utilities we use to compress data files use lossless encoding
techniques. JPEG image compression is a lossy technique because some
information is lost.

Channel Encoding
Redundancy is introduced so that at the
receiving end, the redundant bits can be used
for error detection or error correction

Entropy of an Information Source

What is
information?

???

How do we
measure
information

???

Entropy of an Information Source

H = log2 N bits/symbol
Where:
N = symbols

Entropy of an Information Source

Example:
Assume that a source produces the English
letters (from A to Z, including space), and all
these symbols will be produced with equal
probability. Determine the entropy.
Ans. H = 4.75 bits/symbol

Entropy of an Information Source

If a source produces (i)th symbol with a probability of P(i)

Entropy of an Information Source

Example:
Consider a source that produces four
symbols with probabilities of , , 1/8, and
1/8, and all symbols are independent of each
other. Determine the entropy.
Ans. 7/4 bits/symbol

Channel Capacity
The limit at which data can be transmitted
through a medium

Where:

C = channel capacity (bps)

W = bandwidth of the channel (Hz)
S/N = signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) (dB)

SNR

Channel Capacity
Example:
Consider a voice-grade line for which W =
3100 Hz, SNR = 30 dB. Determine the channel
capacity.

Ans: 30.898 kbps

Question
1. To increase C, can we increase W?
2. To increase C, can we increase SNR?

Ans.
1. No, because increasing W increases noise as well, and SNR will be
reduced.
2. No, that results in more noise, called intermodulation noise

Shannons Theorems
In digital communication system, the aim of
the designer is to convert any information into
a digital signal, pass it through the
transmission medium and, at the receiving
end, reproduce the digital signal exactly.

Shannons Theorems
Requirements:

To code any type of information into

digital format
To ensure that the data sent over the
channel is not corrupted.

Source Coding Theorem

States that the number of bits required to
uniquely describe an information source can
be approximated to the information content
as closely as desired.

Example: Consider a source that produces two

symbols A and B with equal probability.
Symbol

Probability

Code Word

0.5

0.5

Now, consider a source that produces these same two

symbols. But instead of coding A and B directly, we can
code AA, AB, BA, BB.
Symbol

Probability

Code Word

AA

0.45

AB

0.45

10

BA

0.05

110

BB

0.05

111

 NOTE:
Assigning short code words to highprobability symbols and long code words to
low-probability symbols results in efficient
coding.

AABABAABBB

0 110 110 10 111

Channel Coding Theorem

States that the error rate of data transmitted
over a bandwidth limited noisy channel can be
reduced to an arbitrary small amount if the
information rate is lower than the channel
capacity.

Example: Consider the example of a source producing

the symbols A and B. A is coded as 1 and B as 0.

Symbols
Produced

Bit Stream

Transmitting111000000111000
101000010111000 Received

NOTE
Source coding is used mainly to reduce the
redundancy in the signal, whereas channel
coding is used to introduce redundancy to
overcome the effect of noise.

Questions:
1. Draw the block diagram of a communication
system and explain the function of each block.
2. What is entropy of an information source?
Illustrate with examples.
3. What is source coding? What is the difference
between lossless coding and lossy coding?
4. Explain the concept of channel capacity with an
example.
5. What is channel coding? Explain the concept of
error correcting codes.

Exercises
1. A source produces 42 symbols with equal
probability. Calculate the entropy of the source.
2. A source produces two symbols A and B with
probabilities of 0.6 and 0.4, respectively.
Calculate the entropy of the source.
3. The ASCII code is used to represent characters in
the computer. Is it an efficient coding techniques
from Shannons point of view? If not, why?

Answers
1.
2.
3.

5.39 bits/symbol
0.970 bits/symbol
In ASCII, each character is represented by seven bits. The
frequency of occurrence of the English letters is not taken into
consideration at all. If the frequency of occurrence is taken into
consideration, then the most frequently occurring letters have to
be represented by small code words (such as 2 bits) and less
frequently occurring letters have to be represented by long code
words. According to Shannons theory, ASCII is not an efficient
coding technique.
However, note that if an efficient coding technique is followed,
then a lot of additional processing is involved, which causes delay
in decoding the text.