Data Communication and

Computer Networks

ECTS: 6
Instructor: Berhane Wolde-Gabriel
Chapter 2- Concepts of Data
Communications
2.1 - Data Communications and Its Components

Data communication exchange of data between

two devices.
Data communications is concerned with:
Transfer of data
Method of transfer
Preservation of data
Effectiveness of Data Communication System
depends on:
Delivery
Accuracy
Timeliness
Data Communications and its Components (Contd)

Functionally, it consists of:

Message
Sender
Receiver
Medium
Protocol

Transmission
Network
DTE DCE DCE DTE

DTE: Data Terminal Equipment DCE: Data Communication Equipment

 2.2 Analog and Digital Signals
Analog signal
varies continuously over continuous time
Digital signal
varies in steps over discrete intervals of time

Intensity Intensity

Time Time

Analog Signal Digital Signal

 Analog and Digital Signals (Contd)

Digital signals are less affected by noise

Rounded to the nearest value at the receiver

Analog Signal and Noise Digital Signal and Noise

 Analog and Digital Signals (Contd)
Analog signal is converted to digital signal in
three steps:
Sampling
Quantizing
Encoding
 Analog and Digital Signals (Contd)
For a sinusoidal signal:
Amplitude refers to the magnitude of the peak value.
Phase describes the position of the waveform relative to
time 0.
Period (T) is the time required to make one full cycle.
Frequency (f) is the number of cycles per second and is
expressed as Hertz (Hz)
Thus, if one sine wave makes 10 cycles per second, then
its frequency is 10 Hz and the time required to make one
cycle is 1/10 = 0.1 seconds. Thus,
f = 1/T or T = 1/f
 Analog and Digital Signals (Contd)
Simple sinusoidal signals may vary in:
Amplitude
Frequency
Phase
 Analog and Digital Signals (Contd)

Signals may be periodic or non-periodic

Aperiodic Digital Signal

Time
 Analog and Digital Signals (Contd)
A sine wave can be represented by one single spike
in the frequency domain.
 Analog and Digital Signals (Contd)
Any periodic signal can be decomposed into a
sum of discrete sinusoidal signals using a Fourier
series expansion.
Fundamental frequency and harmonics

(a) Fundamental frequency (b) 3rd harmonic (3 x Fundamental frequency

(c) Combination of fundamental and 3rd harmonic (d) Frequency domain representation
 Analog and Digital Signals (Contd)

Non-periodic signals can be represented in the

frequency domain as a continuous spectrum of
frequency components, using Fourier Transform
 2.3 Data Transmission
Digital signal has infinite bandwidth
Transmission medium has finite bandwidth
Thus, some of the frequency components
will be lost resulting in distortion
The less the bandwidth, the greater the
distortion, and vice-versa.
The greater the bandwidth of a medium,
the higher is the data rate that can be
transmitted with less distortion.
 Bandwidth and Distortion

0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0

Pulses before transmission:

Bit rate: 2000 bits per second
Pulses after transmission:
Bandwidth: 500 Hz

Bandwidth: 900 Hz

Bandwidth: 1300 Hz

Bandwidth: 1700 Hz

Bandwidth: 2500 Hz

Bandwidth: 4000 Hz
 Transmission Impairments
Transmission media is not perfect.
That imperfection causes signal impairment.
Transmission impairments include attenuation,
distortion, and noise
Attenuation is reduction of the amplitude of an
electrical signal - logarithmic in nature.
Distortion is the change in shape that a signal
undergoes on its way to the destination.
Noise is undesired signal that is inserted during
transmission
Transmission Impairments (Contd)
Attenuation
Means loss of energy -> weaker signal
When a signal travels through a medium it
loses energy overcoming the resistance of the
medium
Amplifiers are used to compensate for this loss
of energy by amplifying the signal.
 Transmission Impairments (Contd)
A communication system may be represented with a block
diagram:

Amplification / attenuation is expressed in decibel (NdB):

Pout
N dB 10. log
Pin

If Pin = 10 watts and Pout = 100 watts, then:

N dB 10. log 100 10 10dB

 Transmission Impairments (Contd)
Effective gain/loss of a communication system
involving several media is the sum of each
gain/loss :

N dB 10 7 10 3 10dB Pout 10Pin

The decibel is also expressed in terms of

the ratio of the voltage, i.e :
N dB 10 log out 20 log Vout
P

Pin Vin
 Transmission Impairments (Contd)
Distortion
Means that the signal changes its form or shape
Caused by variation of speed with frequency.
The different components therefore arrive with different
delays at the receiver.
That means that the signals have different phases at the
receiver than they did at the source.
 Transmission Impairments (Contd)
Noise - undesired signal inserted during transmission
Thermal noise (white noise) - due to thermal agitation
of electrons; covers wide frequency range.
Inter-modulation noise - sum or difference or multiple
of original frequencies of signals at different
frequencies that share the same transmission medium
Crosstalk - due to electric coupling between nearby
twisted pairs
Impulse noise - irregular pulses or noise spikes of
short duration and high amplitudes. (May be caused by
lightning or flaws in communications system).
 Transmission Impairments (Contd)
Signal to noise ratio (SNR)
Measures the quality of a system.
It is the ratio between the power of the signal to
the noise power.
It is usually given in dB and referred to as
SNRdB.
For example, if signal power is 10,000 mW and
the noise power is 1mW, then:
SNR = 10,000/1=10,000, and
SNRdB = 10 log10(104) = 40 dB
 Channel Capacity
Nyquist Theorem states:
a signal must be sampled at least twice as fast as
the bandwidth of the signal to accurately
reconstruct it
s 2B samples per second (B = signal bandwidth, kHz)
M quantization levels requires log2M bits to
represent it.
Minimum channel capacity (C) is thus:
C = 2Blog2M
Where C= channel capacity in bps, B = bandwidth
of analog signal in Hz
 Channel Capacity (Contd)

E.g. Given Pulse Code Modulation (PCM), with

B = 4000Hz & M=256,
C= 2x4000xlog2(256) = 64,000 Hz = 64 kHz
Signal to noise ratio (SNR) tells how much a
signal has been corrupted by noise
Shannons Theorem gives the capacity of a
system in the presence of noise, which is
C=B*log2(1+SNR), where SNR=S/N
 Channel Capacity (Contd)
Calculate the highest bit rate of a regular
telephone line which has a bandwidth of 3000
Hz, if the signal-to-noise ratio is 3162.

C = Blo2(1+SNR) = 3000 log2(1+3162) = 3000log2(3163)

= 3000 x 11.62 = 34, 860 bps

Thus, the highest bit rate for a telephone line is

34.860 kbps. To send data faster than this, we
can either increase the bandwidth of the line or
improve the signal-to-noise ratio.
.
 Analog and Digital Data Transmission

Data - entity to be transmitted.

Signal - the electric/electromagnetic
encoding (representation) of the data.
Transmission - communication of data by
the propagation and processing of signals.
In analog transmission, signals are
transmitted without regard to content.
In digital transmission, the content of
message could be interpreted to aid in faithful
transmission.
 Analog and Digital Data Transmission
Data are propagated from one point to another by means of
electromagnetic signals, which can be analog or digital.
Digital signals are:
Generally cheaper than analog signaling
Less susceptible to noise
Suffer more from attenuation!
Pulses become rounded and smaller
Leads to loss of information
Usually, we use digital signals for digital data and analog
signals for analog data
Can use analog signal to carry digital data (modem)
Can use digital signal to carry analog data (Codec)
 Analog and Digital Data Transmission

In analog transmission
Signal is analog, data can be analog or digital
Amplifiers are used to amplify attenuated signal
Noise is also amplified
The cumulative effect is more distortion
In digital transmission
Signal is digital, data can be analog or digital
Repeaters are used, not amplifiers
A repeater receives the signal, recovers the pattern of 1s and 0s, regenerates
the signal, and retransmits the signal.
Attenuation is overcome, no cumulative noise
 Analog and Digital Data Transmission (Contd)
(a) Data and Signals
Analog Signal Digital Signal
Analog Signal in the same Analog data are encoded
Data spectrum as the analog using a codec to produce a
data, or digital bit stream
Analog data are
encoded to occupy a
different portion of
spectrum
Digital Digital data are Digital data are encoded
Data encoded using a to produce a digital signal
modem to produce with desired properties.
analog signal.
 Analog and Digital Data Transmission (Contd)

(b) Treatment of Signals

Analog Transmission Digital Transmission
Analog Signal is propagated Signal is propagated
Signal through amplifiers through repeaters

Digital Not used Signal is propagated

Signal through repeaters
 2.4 Data Representation
Text - represented as a bit pattern, a sequence
of bits or codes (0s and 1s). ASCII (7 bits) and
Unicode (16 or 32 bits)
Numbers also bit patterns; binary number
system
Images - matrix of pixels (picture elements),
where each pixel is a small dot and each pixel is
assigned bit patterns:
1 bit black and white
Gray scale with several bits
RGB (Red, Green Blue) or YCM (Yellow, Cyan,
Magneta) gray scales for color images
Data Representation (Contd)

Audio Analog signal; it is digitized before

being represented in computers
Video - either produced as a continuous
entity (e.g., by a TV camera), or it can be a
combination of images, each a discrete
entity, arranged to convey the idea of
motion.
2.5 Types of Data Flow and Transmission
Communication can take different modes:
Simplex Unidirectional (transmit or receive)
Half-duplex Transmit and receive, but not at the
same time
Full-duplex Transmit and receive at the same time
Two options for transmission
Parallel 8-bits (1 byte) transmitted at a time
Serial one bit transmitted at a time. The least
significant bit (LSB) is usually transmitted first
MSB LSB

0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0
0 0 0
 Types of Data Flow and Transmission (Contd)

Transmission speed is expressed in number of bits

transferred in one second. Units include:
bits per second (bps)
kilobits per second (kbps) = 1000bps
megabits per second (Mbps) = 1000 kbps
gigabits per second (Gbps) = 1000 Mbps
Two different methods of serial transmission:
Asynchronous transmission - source and destination
clocks are free running and not locked to each other.
Short characters of 7 to 8 bit data are sent one at a time framed
by a start bit and 1 or 2 stop bits. It is used for low data transfer
rates, usually 128 kbps or less and short bursts of data.
Types of Data Flow and Transmission (Contd)

Synchronous Transmission sends packets of

characters at a time.
Start and end frames, with special bit patterns,
indicate start and end of packets of characters,
respectively.

Synchronous transmission is more efficient as

only 4 bytes (3 Start Framing bytes and 1 Stop
Framing byte) are required to transmit up to 64
kbits (8 kB). But, it is more difficult and expensive
to implement.
 Types of Data Flow and Transmission
(Contd)
Compare an 8K Byte data transmission using
Asynchronous transmission and Synchronous
Transmission.
Asynchronous: Add 3 bits (1 Start and 2 Stop bits) for
every byte transmitted.
64 kbits + 24 kbits = total of 88 kbits transmitted
Efficiency = 64/88*100% = 73%
Synchronous: Add 4 bytes (32 bits) for the complete 8K
byte data packet.
64 kbits + 32 bits = total of 64.032 kbits transmitted
Efficiency = 64/64.032*100% = 99.9%
 2.6 Signal Encoding
Encoding a process whereby data are converted
into electrical signals to be transmitted over
communication system
Purpose: to optimize use of the transmission medium
Digital Signaling: Data (Analog, Digital) Digital Signal

Analog Signaling: Data (Analog or Digital) Analog Signal

 Digital Data, Digital Signal
Encoding schemes may be used to improve the
performance of signal interpretation
Signal Spectrum: Lack of high-frequency components
less bandwidth is required; no DC component
a.c. coupling is possible (excellent electrical isolation)
Clocking: separate clock or suitable encoding
Error Detection: error-detection capability may be built
into the signaling scheme
Noise Immunity: Some codes perform better than others
in the presence of noise
Cost and Complexity: the higher the signaling rate to
achieve a given data rate, the greater the cost
Encoding Schemes

Negative voltage 1; positive voltage 0, or vice-versa.

Generally used by terminals and other devices.

A transition at the beginning of a bit time denotes a 1; no

transition - 0. More reliable in the presence of noise.
With a complex transmission layout, it is easy to lose the
sense of the polarity of the signal.
Alternate Mark Inversion. 0 = no line signal, and 1 = positive
or negative pulse. 1 pulses must alternate in polarity.
Advantages: no loss of synchronization for a long string of
1s, no DC component, simple means of error detection

Same as bipolar-AMI, except representation of 0 and 1 is

interchanged .
Mid-bit transition serves as a clocking mechanism and
also as data: a low-to high transition represents a 1, and
a high-to-low transition represents a 0. .

Has the added advantage of employing differential

encoding. The mid-bit transition is used only to provide
clocking .
 Digital Data, Analog Signal
Amplitude Shift Keying

A cos(2f ct ) bin 1
s(t )
0 bin 0

Frequency Shift Keying

A cos(2f1t ) bin 1
s(t )
A cos(2f 2t ) bin 0

Phase Shift Keying

Analog Data, Digital Signal
 Analog Data, Analog Signals

Amplitude Modulation (AM)

Amplitude of the carrier signal
varied in accordance with the
information bearing signal.

Frequency Modulation (FM)

Frequency of the carrier is varied in
accordance with the modulating
signal.

Phase Modulation (PM)

Phase of the carrier is varied in
accordance with the modulating
signal.