Introduction to Communication Engineering

Course: History of Engineering Sciences

Lecturer: Dr. Mohamed A. El-Shimy
Department: Electrical Engineering Department,
Affiliation: Alexandria University, Egypt.

1. Introduction
• Communication is the transfer of information from a source over a transmission
channel to a destination. It focuses on the ability to convey the information
quickly and efficiently.
• The information could be sound (an audio signal), images (a video signal), or data
(a digital signal).
• The information transfer is frequently achieved by modulating the information
onto an electromagnetic wave (EMW) which acts as a carrier for the information
signal.
• The electromagnetic carrier waves can be selected from radio frequencies up to
optical range frequencies as shown in the figure. More details can be found in
Appendix A.
• Examples of communication systems are:
▪ Telephony System
▪ Cellular Mobile Networks
▪ Wireless Networks
▪ Audio and Video Broadcasting
▪ Satellite Communications & GPS
▪ Optical Communication system

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2. General Communication System
• A block of diagram of a general communication system is shown in the figure.

• Transmitter
Takes the information and converts it to a signal suitable to transmission.
• Receiver
Takes the transmitted signal and converts it back into required information.
• Transmission channel
The physical medium over which the signal is transmitted.

3. Communication Channels
• It is the physical medium over which the signal is transmitted.
• Transmitted signal encounters several problems such as attenuation, amplitude
and phase distortion, and multipath distortion.
• The channel problems can be minimized but not avoided due to practical
constraint limitations. Such as the power-limit and bandwidth-limit constraints.
• These limitations result in constraining the amount of data that can be
transmitted reliably over any communication channel.
• The communication channels can be classified into two classes as follows.

Channel

Wireline Wireless

Twisted- Coaxial Optical

Radio Microwave Optical
Paire Cable Fiber

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A. Wireline Channels

• EMWs carrying the information are guided by a bounded medium. The channel is
well modeled and assumed to be known at the transceiver.

Type Structure Characteristics and Use

• Two conductors that are twisted

together to form a pair.
• It has a bandwidth of several
Twisted-
hundred kilohertz (kHz).
Pair • It is used in telephone network to
connect a customer to a central
office and in data cables.

• Two conductors in a dielectric

medium.
Coaxial
• It has a bandwidth of several
Cable megahertz (MHz).
• It can be used as a connection
between a transmitter or receiver
and an antenna such as TV cable.

• A single-conductor (hollow-pipe) of
Waveguide rectangular or circular cross section.
• It operates in the GHz (microwave)
range.

• It is a dielectric waveguide.
• The transmitter is a light source and
the receiver is a photodiode.
Optical • It offers a very large bandwidth with
Fibers a relatively low signal attenuation
• It is the preferred choice for long
distance connections between cities
and countries for large transmission
of data.
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B. Wireless Channels

• Transmission of information wirelessly using radio, micro, or optical waves.

• The channel is a broadcast medium; hence interference can be occurred due to
simultaneous transmission of different signals from other users of the channel.
• Wireless channels can be established in indoor or outdoor environments.

Indoor Outdoor

4. Message Signal
Analog Messages
• They are characterized by data whose values vary over a continuous range and are
defined for a continuous range of time.
• Over a given time interval, an infinite number of possible different can exist.
• For example, an audio or video signal.

Digital Messages
• They are combinations of finite symbols.
• Over a given time interval, a finite number of possible digital messages can occur.
• For example, as the output of a teletype machine.

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5. Carrier Modulations
A. Definition

• It is a process where a message signal modulates a carrier signal.

• The carrier signal is normally a sinusoidal signal with a general function:
𝑓(𝑡) = 𝐴sin(𝜔𝑡 + 𝜙)
where 𝐴 is the amplitude, 𝜔 is the frequency, and 𝜙 is the phase.
• Through modulation, one of the carrier parameters is varied in proportion to the
message signal.
B. Types of Modulation

Analog Modulation Digital Modulation

Analog Signal Digital Signal

Carrier Signal Carrier Signal

Amplitude Modulation (AM) Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK)

Frequency Modulation (FM) Frequency Shift Keying (FSK)

Phase Modulation (PM) Phase Shift Keying (PSK)

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C. Why Modulation?

• For comparison, the carrier and the message signal can be viewed as a stone and a
piece of paper. The paper cannot go far by itself, thus, it is wrapped around a stone
to be thrown over a longer distance.
• Some of the important reasons are as follows.
A. Ease of Transmission

• Transmission channel acts like a bandpass filter centered at a specific frequency.

Thus, both the lowest frequency and the highest frequency components are
attenuated. Hence, the modulation shifts the frequency of data signal to allow it to
be transmitted over the channel.
B. Ease of Radiation

• For efficient radiation, the antenna size is typically on the order of a fraction of the
wavelength of the radiated signal.
• For many message signals, the wavelengths are too large which lead to an
impractically large antenna. For example, the power in a speech signal is
concentrated at frequencies in the range of 100 to 3000 Hz with corresponding
long wavelength of 100 to 3000 km.
• Instead, by transmitting a high-frequency carrier that has a much smaller
wavelength comparing to the message frequency, a reasonable antenna size can be
achieved.
C. Transmission of Multiple Signals

• With modulation, multiple signals, such as the output of multiple TV stations, can
modulate carrier with different frequencies, which allows transmission at the
same time in the same geographical area without interference.
• At the receiver, TV set for example, a tunable bandpass filter can select the desired
station.
• This method is known as frequency division multiplexing (FDM).

6. Analog and Digital Communications

Analog Communication
• Transferred information takes on a continuum of values.
Digital Communication
• Information being transferred is represented in digital format, most commonly as
binary digits, or bits.

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7. Why the World is Going Digital?
• Within the past decade, the “digital technology” is replacing the old “analog
technology” by using the powerful and inexpensive high-speed digital circuits
Noise Immunity of Digital Signals
• At the receiver, the extraction of the message from a distorted and noisy signal at
the channel output is often easier from digital signals than from analog signals
because the digital decision must belong to the finite-sized alphabet.
• Consider a binary case where two symbols are encoded as pulses and transmitted.
At the receiver, the only decision is to select between the two possible received
pulses, where the fine details of the pulse shape are not an issue.
• With a modest distortion and noise, the data can be recovered with high accuracy.
• In contrast, in analog message, the waveform carries the needed information, and
a slight distortion or interference will show up in the received signal.
Regenerative Repeaters
• Repeaters stations are placed along the communication path of a digital system at
distances short enough to ensure that noise and distortion remain within a limit.
• In digital systems, the incoming pulses are detected, and new clean pulses are
retransmitted. This prevents the accumulation of noise and distortion along the
path.
• For analog systems, repeaters are basically filters plus amplifiers and are not
regenerative. Thus, signals and noise within the same bandwidth cannot be
separated.

Transmitted signal

Received distorted signal

(without noise)

Received distorted signal

(with noise)

Regenerated signal
(delayed)

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8. Analog Communication System
• It is based on using analog modulation techniques. It is widely using in old system
such as terrestrial radio and television broadcasting systems.
• The transmitter consists of a modulator and the receiver consists of a
demodulator.

9. Digital Communication System

• Consider a block diagram of a basic elements of a digital communication system.
• The source output may be either an analog message, such as audio or video signal,
or a digital message, such as the output of a teletype machine.
• In a digital communication system, the message produced by an analog source is
converted into a sequence of digits, most commonly as binary digits, or bits.
• The transmitter modifies the signal for efficient transmission over the channel. It
may consist of an A/D converter, an encoder, and a modulator.
• The receiver reverses the signal modifications made at the receiver and removes
the distortions made by the channel. It may consist of a demodulator, a decoder,
and a D/A converter.

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A. Source Encoder

• It is an efficiently representation of information in binary digital form.

• It eliminates unwanted redundancy in the information to be sent.
• For example, voice can be encoded into a 64 kbps bitstream for conventional
wireline telephony. Audio can be encoded a bit rates of 128 kbps.
B. Channel Encoder

• It introduces redundancy in a controlled fashion that can be used at the receiver in

order to combat errors that may arise from channel imperfections and noise.
• For example, a trivial form of encoding is to repeat each binary digit m times. This
is known as a repetition code. More sophisticated encoding is to map a sequence
of k-bit into a unique n-bit sequence, called a code word.
• The amount of redundancy introduced is measured by n/k, known as code rate.
C. Digital Modulator

• It serves as the interface to the communication channel.

• It translates the discrete symbols output by the channel code into an analog
waveform that can be transmitted over the physical channel.
• Binary Modulation: Maps each binary digit into a signal waveform.
• M-ary Modulation: Transmits one of M waveforms for every b-bit sequence.
D. Communication Channel

• It is the physical medium that provides the connection between the transmitter
and the receiver. It can be wireline or wireless channel.
• The channel behaves as filter that attenuates the transmitted signal and distorted
its transmitted waveform.
E. Digital Demodulator

• It processes the analog received waveform, which is a distorted and noisy version
of the transmitted waveform.
• Its main goal is to produce tentative decisions on the transmitted symbols to be
fed to the channel decoder.
F. Channel Decoder

• Its goal is to produce an estimate of the sequence of information symbols that

were the input to the channel encoder.
G. Source Decoder

• It converts the estimated information bits produced by the channel decoder into a
format that can be used by the end user.
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Appendix
A. Electromagnetic Communications Spectrum

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