Chapter 3:

PCM Noise and Companding

 Quantization Noise
 Signal to Noise Ratio
 PCM Telephone System
 Nonuniform Quantization
 Companding

Huseyin Bilgekul
Eeng360 Communication Systems I
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Eastern Mediterranean University Eeng 360 1
 Quantization Noise
 The process of quantization can be interpreted as an additive noise
process.
Signal Quantized Signal
X XQ

Quantization Noise
nQ

• The signal to quantization noise ratio (SNR)Q=S/N is given as:

Average Power{ X }
( SNR)Q 
Average Power{nQ }

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Effects of Noise on PCM

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 Effects of Quantizing Noise
• If Pe is negligible, there are no bit errors resulting from channel noise and no ISI, the Peak SNR resulting from
only quantizing error is:

• The Average SNR due to quantizing errors is:

• Above equations can be expresses in decibels as,

Where, M = 2n
α = 4.77 for peak SNR
α = 0 for average SNR

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Above equation is known as the 6-dB rule.

What does the above equation tell us?

**An additional 6-dB improvement in SNR is

obtained for each bit added to the PCM word**.

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 DESIGN OF A PCM SIGNAL FOR TELEPHONE SYSTEMS

8 /s

• This 64-kbit/s signal is called a DS-0 signal (digital signal, type zero).
• The minimum absolute bandwidth of the binary PCM signal is

R nf s
BPCM  
2 2
This B is for a sinx/x type pulse sampling

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 DESIGN OF A PCM SIGNAL FOR TELEPHONE SYSTEMS

• If we use a rectangular pulse for sampling the first null bandwidth is given by

• We require a bandwidth of 64kHz to transmit this digital voice PCM signal, whereas the bandwidth of the
original analog voice signal was, at most, 4kHz.

• We observe that the peak signal-to-quantizing noise power ratio is:

Note:
1. Coding with parity bits does NOT affect the quantizing noise,
2. However coding with parity bits will improve errors caused by
channel or ISI, which will be included in Pe ( assumed to be 0).
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 Nonuniform Quantization
 Many signals such as speech have a nonuniform distribution.
– The amplitude is more likely to be close to zero than to be at higher levels.

 Nonuniform quantizers have unequally spaced levels

– The spacing can be chosen to optimize the SNR for a particular type of signal.
Output sample
XQ 6

2 Example: Nonuniform 3 bit quantizer

-8 -6 -4 -2 2 4 6 8

-2
Input sample
X
-4

-6

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Companding

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 -Law Companding

• Telephones in the U.S., Canada and

Japan use -law companding:
Output |x(t)|

ln(1   | x (t )|)
| y (t ) |
ln(1   )
– Where  = 255 and |x(t)| < 1

0 1
Input |x(t)|

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 Non Uniform quantizing
• Voice signals are more likely to have amplitudes near zero than at extreme peaks.
• For such signals with non-uniform amplitude distribution quantizing noise will be
higher for amplitude values near zero.
• A technique to increase amplitudes near zero is called Companding.

Effect of non linear quantizing can be

obtained by first passing the analog
signal through a compressor (non-
linear amplifier) and then through a
uniform quantizer.
x x’ x’ y
Q(.
C(.) )
Compressor Uniform Quantizer

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 A-law and law Companding
• These two are standard companding methods.
• u-Law is used in North America and Japan
• A-Law is used elsewhere to compress digital telephone signals

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 SNR of Compander
• The output SNR is a function of input signal level for uniform quantizing.
• But it is relatively insensitive for input level for a compander

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SNR Performance of Compander

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 V.90 56-Kbps PCM Computer modem
• The V.90 PC Modem transmits data at 56kb/s from a PC
via an analog signal on a dial-up telephone line.
• A μ law compander is used in quantization with a value
for μ of 255.
• The modem clock is synchronized to the 8-ksample/ sec
clock of the telephone company.
• 7 bits of the 8 bit PCM are used to get a data rate of
56kb/s ( Frequencies below 300Hz are omitted to get rid
of the power line noise in harmonics of 60Hz).
• SNR of the line should be at least 52dB to operate on
56kbps.
• If SNR is below 52dB the modem will fallback to lower
speeds ( 33.3 kbps, 28.8kbps or 24kbps).

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