ECE 104

Chapter 1
Elements and Limitations of Communication Systems

Communication system – information transfer

Information – no precise definition
Message – physical manifestation of information as produced by the source

2 message categories:

1. Analog – physical quantity that varies continuously with time

Ex. Acoustic sound, angular position of an aircraft gyro, light intensity at
some point in a TV image
Fidelity – measure of correctness
2. digital – ordered sequence of symbols selected from a finite set of discrete
elements
Ex. Letters, listing of hourly temperature readings, etc..
Accuracy – symbols should be delivered in a specified amount of time
 Block Diagram of a Communication System

Input Output
signal signal
source destination
Input Communication Output
transducer system transducer

Converts message to an
electrical signal, ex.
Microphone, speaker
 Block Diagram of A Communication System with Noise

Input Transmitted Received

signal signal Signal
Output
source
signal
Transmitter Transmission Receiver
Channel destination

Noise, interference and

distortion
 Elements of a communication system
1. transmitter – process input signal to produce a transmitted signal suitable for
transmission’s channel characteristics.

2. transmission channel – electrical medium that bridges the distance from source to
destination.
Ex. Pair of wires, coaxial cable, fiber optics, radio wave or laser beams

Attenuation – loss, factors affecting transmission channel

3. Receiver – operates on the output signal from the channel in preparation for deliver
to the transducer at the destination.

Operations:
Amplification
Decoding
Demodulation
filtering
 WIRED TRANSMISSION CHANNEL

UTP Cable – Unshielded Twisted Pair

Fiber optics cable

Coaxial Cable
WIRELESS (RADIO) TRANSMISSION CHANNEL
 HISTORY
Communication System:
❖hand gestures and facial expressions
❖Verbal communication system using sound waves
❖Smoke signals or tom-tom drums

Using electricity:
1837 – Samuel Finley Breese Morse invented the workable telegraph
1838 – 1848 - Morse process the patent and was granted
- used electromagnetic induction which transfer dots, dashes and spaces using
metallic wire
1876 – Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson invented the telephone
1894 – Marchese Guglielmo Marconi 🡪 transmit wirelessly
1906 – Lee deForest invented the triode vacuum tube for amplification of signals
1920 – Radio station KDKA began broadcasting using AM in Pittsburgh, Pensylvania
1931 – Major Edwin Howard Armstrong patented the FM
1935 – commercial broadcasting of monophonic FM
 Technological Transmission Advances

• Weak electric currents could operate a receiver at a distance

• More than 1000 miles over open wire
1900 • About 200 miles on underground cable

• Vacuum-tube line amplifiers enabled speech to be transmitted

by longer distance
1913

• Coast-to-coast long distance telephone connections were

established
1915
 Technological Transmission Advances

• Transatlantic radiotelephone service was introduced

1927

• J.R. Carson at Bell Laboratories developed FDM (Frequency Division

Multiplexing)
1930’s • 12 conversations were conducted over two pairs of cable wires

• Coaxial cables were introduced to permit wideband transmission of

telephone signals
1941
Technological Transmission Advances

•Satellite
communications
1960’s deployed
 FACTORS THAT MAKE TELECOM DIFFICULT

•very long history : from 1876 to present

✔Many things are what they are due to what
happened in the past
•Long-lived products and standards
•Peer to peer communications
✔Harder problems of compatibility,
connectivity, routing and congestion control
•Reliability
✔Extreme and continuous
TELECOMMUNICATION STANDARDS
ITU – International Telecommunications Union
(a.k.a. CCITT)
- International standards and prevailing
local standards outside North America

ANSI- American National Standards Institute

- Sponsor T1 committee and other standards
- Carrier standards for North America

IETF – Internet Engineering Task Force

- Internet protocol standards worldwide
- Produce high quality, relevant technical
documents that influence the way people
design, use and manage the internet
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
-created several committees such as:
802 committee – data communication
standards

ECMA – European Computer Manufacture

- Standards for computer equipment in Europe

Industry Forums:
ATM Forums, DSL Forums, etc..
- Manufacturers and carriers common positions
of equipment and standards
 Telcordia
-also known as Bellcore
- Common standards
and procedures for local
carriers with U.S.
LAWS THAT DRIVE TECHNOLOGY
• The potential difference (voltage) across an ideal conductor

Ohm’s Law is proportional to the current through it

• Determine the distance that signals could be sent without
amplification

Moore’s • The number of transistors that can fit onto a square inch of
silicon double every 12 months
Law
Gilder’s • The total bandwidth of communication systems triples
every 12 months
Law
 • The value of a network is
Metcalfe’ proportional to the square of
the number of nodes
s Law • The cost per user remains the
same or even reduces

Murphy’s • Anything that can go wrong will

go wrong at the worst possible
Law time
Moore’s Law and Gilder’s Law
Graph
 Power Measurements

dB – decibel
- measure ratios
- measure magnitude of earthquakes, i.e., Richter scale measures the intensity of
earthquake relative to a reference intensity
- measure intensity of acoustical signals in dB-SPL (SPL – sound pressure level, i.e.
zero dB-SPL 🡪the threshold of hearing)
10 dB-SPL 🡪 sound of rustling leaves
120 – 140 dB-SPL 🡪 sound produced by a jet engine
120 dB-SPL 🡪 threshold of pain
- measure power ratios
- used to avoid using excessively large or extremely small numbers
- transmission-measuring unit

Where
To measure power gain or loss

Negative (-) dB 🡪 output power is less than input power, power loss
Positive (+) dB 🡪 output power is more than input power, power gain
dBm – unit of measurement used to indicate the ratio of a power level with respect to a
fixed reference level (1mW)
1mW – average power produced by a telephone transmitter across a 600 – ohm
load which can be used until today for 50-,75-,600-,900-,124- & 300-ohm
load

Convert a power level of 200mW to dBm:

 Power Levels, Gains and Losses

Example: Given a three-stage system comprised of two amplifiers and one filter, the
input power is 0.1mW, the absolute power gains are: Ap1 = 100, Ap2 = 40, Ap3=0.25.
Determine (a) the input power in dBm, (b) output power (Pout) in watts and dBm,
(c) the dB gain of each of the three stages, and (d) the overall gain in dB.

Solution:
a. The input power in dBm is

b. Output power:
c. dB value of the three gains are:

d. Total power gain in dB

*please read page 11-12 (Tomasi)

 Undesirable effects in transmission channel:
1. distortion – waveform perturbation

appears when desired signal is turned off

equalizers can correct or reduced its effect

2. interference – contamination of signal by extraneous signal from human sources –

other transmitted, power lines and machinery, switching circuits and so on.

3. RFI – Radio Frequency Interference

4. Noise – random and unpredictable electrical signal produced by natural processes

both internal and external to the system.
 Kinds of Transmission:

1.Simplex – SX
1.one way

2.Duplex – DX
1.two way
•half-duplex – one at a time
•full – duplex – simultaneous
 Fundamental Limitations

2 Kinds of Constraints:

1. Technological problems – hardware availability, economic factors, federal

regulations, etc..
2. Fundamental physical limitations – laws of nature

- bandwidth and noise

• Bandwidth:
Ex. Video – greater bandwidth
Voice – B = 3 kHz
Digital – B = r/2 with r 🡪 symbols/sec
• Noise:
Ex. Thermal noise – random motion of particles
🡪 Signal is now measured in S/N or signal to noise ratio
🡪 the higher the S/N, the more negligible the thermal noise

Channel Capacity:
🡪 Hartley-Shannon Law
 Modulation and Coding

Modulation – the process of changing the characteristics of the

information-bearing signal

2 components:
1. modulating signal
2. carrier signal

3 Kinds of modulation for analog signal:

1. AM – Amplitude modulation
2. FM – Frequency Modulation
3. PM – Phase Modulation
Modulation Benefits & Applications:
Main Purpose – generate a modulated signal suited to the
characteristics of the transmission channel

Practical Benefits:

For efficient transmission

❑Antenna length can be made shorter
Antenna length, where = wavelength of the signal
where f = frequency of signal

Ex. f = 100 Hz
and

antenna length
Overcome hardware limitations

where B 🡪 Bandwidth and

🡪 center frequency

❖the lower the fractional bandwidth, the lower the hardware costs and
complications
▪fractional bandwidth should be within 1-10%

❖signals with large bandwidth should be modulated on high-frequency

carriers

high information rate 🡪 high carrier frequency

Reduce noise and interference

1. one early transatlantic cables were apparently destroyed by

high – voltage rupture in an effort to obtain a usable received signal
2. FM has the property of wideband noise reduction

For frequency assignments – several stations can use the

frequency spectrum

for multiplexing

Multiple access – variation of multiplexers

Modulation 🡪 signal – processing for effective transmission

Coding 🡪 symbol-processing operation for improved

communication when information is digital

Encoding 🡪 Transforms a digital message into a new sequence

of symbols

Channel Coding 🡪 introduce controlled redundancy to further improve

the performance reliability in a noisy channel

Error Control Coding 🡪 Appending extra check digits to each

binary codeword 🡪 detect or correct errors 🡪 increase bandwidth

where k 🡪 no. of binary digits