Chapter 3

Introduction to Physical Layer

 Analog and Digital Data

Data
- Analog: refers to information that is continuous
e.g., analog clock

- Digital: refers to information that has discrete states

e.g., digital clock

3.2
 Analog and Digital Signals

Like the data they represent, signals can be either

analog or digital.

- An analog signal has infinitely many levels of

intensity over a period of time

- A digital signal can have only a limited number of

defined values.

3.3
 Figure 3.2: Comparison of analog and digital signals

3.4
 Periodic and Nonperiodic

- A periodic signal completes a pattern within a

measurable time frame, called a period, and repeats
that pattern over subsequent identical periods.
The completion of one full pattern is called a cycle.

- A nonperiodic signal changes without exhibiting a

pattern or cycle that repeats over time.

3.5
 PERIODIC ANALOG SIGNALS

Periodic analog signals can be classified as simple

or composite.

- A simple periodic analog signal, a sine wave,

cannot be decomposed into simpler signals.

- A composite periodic analog signal is composed

of multiple sine waves.

3.6
 Figure 3.3: A sine wave

Value

•••
Time

3.7
 Figure 3.4: Two signals with two different amplitudes

Peak
amplitude

Peak
amplitude

3.8
 Figure 3.5: Two signals with the same phase and frequency, but
different amplitudes

3.9
 Table 3.1: Units of period and frequency

3.10
 Phase

The term phase, or phase shift, describes the position of the

waveform relative to time 0.

3.11
 Figure 3.6: Three sine waves with different phases

3.12
 Wavelength

Wavelength binds the period or the frequency of a

simple sine wave to the propagation speed of the
medium.

3.13
 Figure 3.7: Wavelength and period

Direction of
propagation

3.14
 Time and Frequency Domains

A sine wave is comprehensively defined by its

amplitude, frequency, and phase.

We have been showing a sine wave by using what is

called a time domain plot. The time-domain plot
shows changes in signal amplitude with respect to
time (it is an amplitude-versus-time plot).

Phase is not explicitly shown on a time-domain plot.

3.15
 Figure 3.8: The time-domain and frequency-domain plots of a sine wave

3.16
Example

The frequency domain is more compact and useful when we

are dealing with more than one sine wave. For example,
Figure 3.9 shows three sine waves, each with different
amplitude and frequency. All can be represented by three
spikes in the frequency domain.

3.17
 Figure 3.9: The time domain and frequency domain of three sine waves

3.18
 Bandwidth

The bandwidth is normally a difference between two

numbers. For example, if a composite signal contains
frequencies between 1000 and 5000, its bandwidth is
5000 − 1000, or 4000.

3.19
 Example
If a periodic signal is decomposed into five sine waves with
frequencies of 100, 300, 500, 700, and 900 Hz, what is its
bandwidth?
Solution
Let fh be the highest frequency, fl the lowest frequency, and
B the bandwidth. Then

3.20
Example
A periodic signal has a bandwidth of 20 Hz. The highest
frequency is 60 Hz. What is the lowest frequency? Draw the
spectrum if the signal contains all frequencies of the same
amplitude.
Solution
Let fh be the highest frequency, fl the lowest frequency, and
B the bandwidth. Then

The spectrum contains all integer frequencies. We show this

by a series of spikes (see Figure 3.15).

3.21
 Figure 3.15: The bandwidth for example 3.11

3.22
 DIGITAL SIGNALS

- In addition to being represented by an analog

signal, information can also be represented by a
digital signal.
For example, a 1 can be encoded as a positive
voltage and a 0 as zero voltage.

- A digital signal can have more than two levels. In

this case, we can send more than 1 bit for each
level.

3.23
 Figure 3.17: Two digital signals: one with two signal levels and the
other with four signal levels

3.24
Example

A digital signal has eight levels. How many bits are needed
per level? We calculate the number of bits from the
following formula. Each signal level is represented by 3 bits.

3.25
Example

A digital signal has nine levels. How many bits are needed
per level?

The number of bits sent per level needs to be an integer as

well as a power of 2. For this example, 4 bits can represent
one level.

3.26
 Bit Rate

Most digital signals are nonperiodic, and thus period

and frequency are not appropriate characteristics.
Another term— bit rate (instead of frequency)—is used
to describe digital signals.

The bit rate is the number of bits sent in 1s, expressed in

bits per second (bps).

3.27
 TRANSMISSION IMPAIRMENT

- What is sent is not what is received

- Three causes of impairment are

attenuation, distortion, and noise

3.28
 3.4.1 Attenuation

- Attenuation means a loss of energy.

- When a signal, simple or composite, travels

through a medium, it loses some of its energy in
overcoming the resistance of the medium.

- To compensate for this loss, amplifiers are used to

amplify the signal.

3.29
 Figure 3.27: Attenuation and amplification

3.30
Example

Suppose a signal travels through a transmission medium and

its power is reduced to one half. This means that P2 = 0.5
P1. In this case, the attenuation (loss of power) can be
calculated as

A loss of 3 dB (−3 dB) is equivalent to losing one-half the

power.

3.31
 Distortion
- Signal changes its form or shape.

- Distortion can occur in a composite signal made

of different frequencies.

- Each signal component has its own propagation

speed through a medium and, therefore, its own
delay in arriving at the final destination.

- Differences in delay may create a difference in

phase if the delay is not exactly the same as the
period duration.
3.32
 Figure 3.29: Distortion

3.33
 Noise

- Noise is another cause of impairment.

- Several types of noise, such as thermal noise,
induced noise, crosstalk, and impulse noise, may
corrupt the signal.
- Thermal noise is the random motion of electrons in
a wire, which creates an extra signal not originally
sent by the transmitter.
- Induced noise comes from sources such as motors.
- Crosstalk is the effect of one wire on the other.

3.34
 Figure 3.30: Noise

3.35
 DATA RATE LIMITS

- How fast we can send data, in bits per second,

over a channel.

- Two theoretical formulas were developed to

calculate the data rate:
Nyquist for a noiseless channel
Shannon for a noisy channel.

3.36
 Noiseless Channel: Nyquist Rate

For a noiseless channel, the Nyquist bit rate formula

defines the theoretical maximum bit rate.

3.37
Example

Consider a noiseless channel with a bandwidth of 3000 Hz

transmitting a signal with two signal levels. The maximum
bit rate can be calculated as

3.38
Example

Consider the same noiseless channel transmitting a signal

with four signal levels (for each level, we send 2 bits). The
maximum bit rate can be calculated as

3.39
Example
We need to send 265 kbps over a noiseless channel with a
bandwidth of 20 kHz. How many signal levels do we need?

Solution
We can use the Nyquist formula as shown:

Since this result is not a power of 2, we need to either

increase the number of levels or reduce the bit rate. If we
have 128 levels, the bit rate is 280 kbps. If we have 64
levels, the bit rate is 240 kbps.

3.40
 Noisy Channel: Shannon Capacity

In reality, we cannot have a noiseless channel; the

channel is always noisy. In 1944, Claude Shannon
introduced a formula, called the Shannon capacity, to
determine the theoretical highest data rate for a noisy
channel:

3.41
Example
Consider an extremely noisy channel in which the value of
the signal-to-noise ratio is almost zero. In other words, the
noise is so strong that the signal is faint. For this channel the
capacity C is calculated as

This means that the capacity of this channel is zero

regardless of the bandwidth. In other
words, we cannot receive any data through this channel.

3.42
Example
We can calculate the theoretical highest bit rate of a regular
telephone line. A telephone line normally has a bandwidth of
3000 Hz (300 to 3300 Hz) assigned for data
communications. The signal-to-noise ratio is usually 3162.
For this channel the capacity is calculated as

This means that the highest bit rate for a telephone line is
34.860 kbps. If we want to send data faster than this, we can
either increase the bandwidth of the line or improve the
signal-to-noise ratio.

3.43
Example

The signal-to-noise ratio is often given in decibels. Assume

that SNRdB = 36 and the channel bandwidth is 2 MHz. The
theoretical channel capacity can be calculated as

3.44
 Using Both Limits

In practice, we need to use both methods to find the

limits and signal levels.

3.45
Example
We have a channel with a 1-MHz bandwidth. The SNR for
this channel is 63. What are the appropriate bit rate and
signal level?
Solution
First, we use the Shannon formula to find the upper limit.

The Shannon formula gives us 6 Mbps, the upper limit. For

better performance we choose something lower, 4 Mbps.
Then we use the Nyquist formula to find the number of
signal levels.

3.46
 PERFORMANCE

One important issue in networking is the

performance of the network— how good is it?

3.47
 Bandwidth

- One characteristic that measures network performance

- can be used in two different contexts with two different

measuring values:
bandwidth in hertz
bandwidth in bits per second

3.48
 Throughput

a measure of how fast we can actually send data

through a network.

3.49
 Throughput

- The latency or delay defines how long it takes for

an entire message to completely arrive at the
destination from the time the first bit is sent out
from the source.

- We can say that latency is made of four

components: propagation time, transmission time,
queuing time and processing delay.

3.50
Example
A network with bandwidth of 10 Mbps can pass only an
average of 12,000 frames per minute with each frame
carrying an average of 10,000 bits. What is the throughput
of this network?

Solution
We can calculate the throughput as

The throughput is almost one-fifth of the bandwidth in this

case.

3.51
Example
What is the propagation time if the distance between the two
points is 12,000 km? Assume the propagation speed to be
2.4 × 108 m/s in cable.

Solution
We can calculate the propagation time as

The example shows that a bit can go over the Atlantic Ocean
in only 50 ms if there is a direct cable between the source
and the destination.

3.52
Example
What are the propagation time and the transmission time for
a 2.5-KB (kilobyte) message if the bandwidth of the
network is 1 Gbps? Assume that the distance between the
sender and the receiver is 12,000 km and that light travels at
2.4 × 108 m/s.
Solution
We can calculate the propagation and transmission time as

Note that in this case, because the message is short and the
bandwidth is high, the dominant factor is the propagation
time, not the transmission time.
3.53
Example
What are the propagation time and the transmission time for
a 5-MB (megabyte) message (an image) if the bandwidth of
the network is 1 Mbps? Assume that the distance between
the sender and the receiver is 12,000 km and that light
travels at 2.4 × 108 m/s.
Solution
We can calculate the propagation and transmission times as

We can calculate the propagation and transmission times as

3.54
 Bandwidth-Delay Product

- Bandwidth and delay are two performance metrics

of a link.

- What is very important in data communications is

the product of the two, the bandwidth-delay product.

3.55
 Figure 3.32: Filling the links with bits for Case 1

3.56
 Figure 3.33: Filling the pipe with bits for Case 2

3.57
Example

- We can think about the link between two points as a pipe.

- The cross section of the pipe represents the bandwidth,

and the length of the pipe represents the delay.

- We can say the volume of the pipe defines the

bandwidth-delay product

3.58
 Figure 3.34: Concept of bandwidth-delay product

3.59
 Jitter

- Another performance issue that is related to delay

is jitter.

- We can roughly say that jitter is a problem if

different packets of data encounter different delays
and the application using the data at the receiver
site is time-sensitive (audio and video data, for
example).

3.60