ECE 9: CODING and

Modulation Techniques
jonnel k. pabico
Digital Transmissions
Digital transmission
• is the transmittal of digital signals between two or more
points in a communications system.
• The signals can be binary or any other form of discrete-
level digital pulses.
• The original source information may be in digital form, or
it could be analog signals that have been converted to
digital pulses prior to transmission and converted back to
analog signals in the receiver.
• With digital transmission systems, a physical facility, such
as a pair of wires, coaxial cable, or an optical fiber cable,
is required to interconnect the various points within the
system.
• The pulses are contained in and propagate down the
cable. Digital pulses cannot be propagated through a
wireless transmission system, such as Earth’s atmosphere
or free space (vacuum).
• AT&T developed the first digital transmission
system for the purpose of carrying digitally
encoded analog signals, such as the human
voice, over metallic wire cables between
telephone offices.
• Today, digital transmission systems are used
to carry not only digitally encoded voice and
video signals but also digital source
information directly between computers and
computer networks.
• Digital transmission systems use both
metallic and optical fiber cables for their
transmission medium
 Advantages of Digital Transmission
1. Noise immunity.
2. Better suited than analog signals for processing and
combining
3. More resistant to analog systems to additive noise
4. Digital signals are simpler to measure and evaluate
than analog signals

Disadvantages of Digital Transmission

1. Requires significantly more bandwidth than simply
transmitting the original analog signal
2. must be converted to digital pulses prior to transmission and
converted back to their original analog form at the receiver,
thus necessitating additional encoding and decoding circuitry
3. transmission requires precise time synchronization between
the clocks in the transmitters and receivers
4. digital transmission systems are incompatible with older
analog transmission systems.
Data Conversion
• In digital transmission, the system can only understand the binary language that is of the form of 0 or 1 and also
stores the information in the digital form.
• Thus we need to convert the data into digital form so that it can be understood by the computer.
 Digital-to-digital conversion
Three techniques used for this conversion are as
follows:
 Line Coding
 Block Coding
 Scrambling
A.Line Coding
• Line coding (also called digital baseband modulation or digital baseband transmission) is
a process carried out by a transmitter that converts data, in the form of binary digits, into
a baseband digital signal that will represent the data on a transmission line.
• It is the process used to convert digital data to digital signals. Let us assume that data is
in the form of text, numbers, audio, or video and it is stored in the form of a sequence of
bits in the computer.
• Thus, Line coding process converts the sequence of bits to a digital signal.
 • On the sender side, the digital data are encoded into digital signals,
• and on the receiver side, digital data is recreated by decoding the digital signal.

Line Coding schemes can be broadly classified into five categories:

 Unipolar
 Polar
 Bipolar
 Multilevel
 Multi Transition
A.1. Unipolar Scheme
• In this line coding scheme, all the signal levels are on one side of the time
axis.
• It can be either Above or Below.
• Basically, Unipolar Scheme was designed as a Non-Return-to-Zero
(NRZ) scheme where positive voltage defines bit 1 and zero voltage defined
bit 0.
• The unipolar scheme makes uses only one voltage level.
• It is called NRZ because the signal does not return to zero in the middle of
the bit.
1011110101000101010
A.2. Polar Scheme
• In this line coding scheme, the voltages are on both sides of the time axis. Let us take an
example for this: the voltage level for 0 can be positive and the voltage level for 1 can be
negative.
• Thus, in Polar NRZ encoding, we make use of two levels of voltage amplitude.
A.2.1. There are two versions of Polar NRZ:
A.2.1.1 NRZ-L(NRZ-level)
In this, the level of voltage mainly determines the
value of the bit. Thus the level of the signal
depends upon the value of the bit.
A.2.1.2. NRZ-I(NRZ-Invert)
In this, the change in the level of the voltage
mainly determines the value of the bit. Suppose if
there is no change then the bit is 0; and in case if
there is a change the bit is 1.
1011110101000101010

NRZ-L

1011110101000101010
NRZ-I
A.2.2 Return to Zero (RZ)
• Problem with NRZ is that the receiver cannot conclude when a bit ended and when
the next bit is started, in case when sender and receiver’s clock are not
synchronized.
• RZ uses three voltage levels, positive voltage to represent 1, negative voltage to
represent 0 and zero voltage for none.
• Signals change during bits not between bits.
1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
A.2.3 Manchester
The physical layer of the Open System
Interconnection [OSI] uses Manchester encoding, a
synchronous clock encoding technique, to encode
the clock and data of a synchronous bit stream. In
order to guarantee data security and transmission
speed, many encoding techniques are used. A type
of digital encoding is Manchester encoding.
 A 0 to 1 transition at the bit's center denotes a
logic 0 while a 1 to 0 transition denotes a logic 1.
 There is always a signal transition at the center of
each bit, even though it doesn't always happen at
the "bit boundary."
1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
A.3. Bipolar
A.3.1. AMI (Alternate Mark Inversion)
• Like polar RZ, bipolar line coding schemes (sometimes called multi-level binary or duo-
binary) use three voltage levels - positive, negative and zero.
• That, however, is pretty much where the similarity ends.
• Bipolar alternate mark inversion (AMI) uses alternate positive and negative voltages to
represent logic high (binary one), and a zero voltage to represent logic low (binary
zero).
• Although AMI is technically an NRZ line coding scheme itself, it was developed as an
alternative to other NRZ schemes in which long runs of ones or zeros introduced a DC-
component into the signal.
1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
A.3.2 Psuedoternary
• The pseudoternary version of bipolar line coding is essentially identical to AMI
except that logic high is represented by a zero voltage and logic low is
represented by alternate positive and negative voltages - the exact opposite of
what happens with AMI.
 A.4. Multilevel

•A.4.1
MLT-3MLT-3
(multi-level transmit) is, like polar NRZ-I and differential Manchester, a differential line
coding scheme.
• The "3" in the name reflects the fact that, whereas both of the aforementioned schemes use
only two signal levels (positive and negative) to represent binary values, MLT-3
uses three levels (positive, negative and zero).
• It is also classed as a multi-level encoding scheme, because it uses more than two levels to
represent binary data.

The rules are basically as follows:

 If the next bit will be logic low (binary zero), there is no transition.
 If the next bit will be logic high (binary one), and the current signal level is non-zero, then the
signal will transition to zero.
 If the next bit will be logic high and the current signal level is zero, then the signal will
transition to a level that is the opposite of the most recent non-zero signal level.
Ex. 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
A.BLOCK CODING
B.1 4B5B
• The block coding scheme used with MLT-3 and Fast Ethernet is called 4B5B.
The binary data is broken down into blocks of four bits.
• Four bits gives us 16 possible bit sequences (2 4), so we need 16 different
codes to represent the data. In 4B5B, each 4-bit block of data is replaced with
a unique 5-bit code.
• Five bits produces 32 unique bit patterns (2 5), from which 16 have been
selected to represent the data. Each of the 5-bit codes used will produce at
least two transitions in the output signal.
• The following table lists the 4-bit data sequences, together with the 5-bit
codes used to represent them.
Ex. 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
B.2. 2B1Q
• The 2B1Q (two binary, one quaternary) line coding
scheme is the first of three very different multi-
level schemes we will be looking at.
• The idea behind multi-level schemes generally is to
encode more than one data bit per signal symbol in
order to maximize bandwidth efficiency.
• Putting this more formally, the aim is to
encode m data elements per signal element
using n signal elements.
• This is often reflected in the name given to a
particular line coding scheme. In 2B1Q, for example,
each dibit (dibit is the name given to a pair of bits) is
represented by one quaternary symbol.
B.3 8B6T
• The next multi-level line coding scheme we want to
look at is 8B6T (eight binary, six ternary), which can
also be classed as a multi-level scheme despite the fact
that it uses only three signaling levels
(positive, negative and zero).
• 8B6T is a rather unusual coding scheme that
uses three-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM-3)
to code a block of eight binary digits onto a sequence
of six signaling elements.
• Each signal element takes one of three values -
positive, negative, or zero. The signaling elements in
8B6T are thus said to be ternary symbols (from the
Latin word ternarius, which means "composed of three
items").
B.3 8B6T
B.4. 4D-PAM5
The last multi-level line coding scheme we
are going to look at is 4D-PAM5 (four-
dimensional five-level pulse amplitude
modulation). As the rather long-winded name
suggests, 4D-PAM5 uses five signaling levels
(we'll refer to them as -2, -1, 0, 1 and 2). The 4D
part refers to the fact that data is transmitted
using four wire pairs simultaneously. Before we
talk about 4D-PAM5 in more detail however, a
little background information might help to put
things into context.
A.SCRAMBLING
We can modify the line and block coding by including scrambling. It is important
to note that scrambling as opposed to block coding is mainly done at the time of
encoding.
Mainly the system needs to insert the required pulses on the basis of the
scrambling rules.
Given below are the two common techniques used for scrambling:
C.1. B8ZS(Bipolar with 8-zero substitution)
• With this technique, eight consecutive zero-level voltages are replaced by
the sequence of 000VB0VB. In this sequence V mainly denotes violation and
this is basically a nonzero voltage that breaks the AMI rule of encoding.
• The B in the given sequence denotes Bipolar which simply means nonzero
voltage level according to the AMI rule.
• Given below figure shows two cases of the B8ZS scrambling technique:
C.2 HDB3
• Manchester and differential Manchester are DC-balanced line coding
schemes that provide ample embedded timing information, but they don't
make efficient use of the available bandwidth.
• This is not a huge problem for environments like Ethernet LANs, because
bandwidth limitations are not usually an issue.
• Both the number of users on the network and the types of applications
they use are known, enabling network administrators to calculate the
network's bandwidth requirements and ensure that the network has
sufficient capacity to cope with demand.
C.2 HDB3
• Manchester and differential Manchester are DC- Substitute Bit Pattern Selection
(HDB3)
balanced line coding schemes that provide ample
embedded timing information, but they don't Odd Even
make efficient use of the available bandwidth. Polarit
number of number of
y of
• This is not a huge problem for environments like pulses pulses
previo
Ethernet LANs, because bandwidth limitations are since last since last
us
substitutio substitutio
not usually an issue. pulse
n n
• Both the number of users on the network and the
types of applications they use are known, Negati
enabling network administrators to calculate the 000- +00+
ve
network's bandwidth requirements and ensure
that the network has sufficient capacity to cope Positiv
000+ -00-
with demand. e
Substitute Bit Pattern Selection (HDB3)
Polarity of Odd number of pulses Even number of pulses
previous pulse since last substitution since last substitution
Negative 000- +00+
Positive 000+ -00-
0101100001010111000000000011011000000101111100000
0000001010101011
Analog to Digital Conversion
• In digital communication systems,
information is often transmitted and
processed in a digital format, which
consists of discrete values (usually binary
digits, or "bits").
• However, many real-world signals, such
as audio, video, temperature, sound,
light and pressure, are analog in nature,
meaning they vary continuously over
time.
Analog to Digital Conversion
• Consider a temperature monitoring system wherein
acquiring, analyzing, and processing temperature data
from sensors is not possible with digital computers and
processors.
• Therefore, this system needs an intermediate device to
convert the analog temperature data into digital data in
order to communicate with digital processors like
microcontrollers and microprocessors.
• Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) is an electronic
integrated circuit used to convert the analog signals such
as voltages to digital or binary form consisting of 1s and
0s.
• Most of the ADCs take a voltage input as 0 to 10V, -5V to
+5V, etc., and correspondingly produces digital output as
some sort of a binary number.
Steps in Analog to Digital Conversion
• Sampling
• Quantizing
• Encoding

• The first step in the conversion process is sampling.

• Sampling involves taking periodic samples of the analog signal at a
fixed rate.
• The rate of sampling is known as the sampling rate, and it is
measured in samples per second.
• The higher the sampling rate, the more samples are taken, and the
more accurate the digital representation of the analog signal.
Sampling

• Sampling is a critical step in the conversion

process because it determines the accuracy
of the digital representation of the analog
signal.

• If the sampling rate is too low, the digital

representation of the analog signal will be
inaccurate, and important details of the
signal may be lost.
Two Basic techniques that perform sampling function
 Natural Sampling
• Natural sampling is when tops of the sample pulses retain
their natural shape during the sample interval, making it
difficult for an ADC to convert the sample to a PCM code.
• With natural sampling, the frequency spectrum of the
sampled output is different from that of an ideal sample.
• The amplitude of the frequency components produced
from narrow, finite-width sample pulses decreases for
the higher harmonics in a (sin x)/x manner.
• This alters the information frequency spectrum requiring
the use of frequency equalizers (compensation filters)
before recovery by a low-pass filter
Two Basic techniques that perform sampling function
 Flat top sampling
• The most common method used for sampling
voice signals in PCM systems is flattop sampling,
which is accomplished in a sample-and-hold circuit.
• The purpose of a sample and-hold circuit is to
periodically sample the continually changing analog
input voltage and convert those samples to a series
of constant-amplitude PAM voltage levels.
• With flat-top sampling, the input voltage is
sampled with a narrow pulse and then held
relatively constant until the next sample is taken.
Two Basic techniques that perform sampling function
Two Basic techniques that perform sampling function
Two Basic techniques that perform sampling function
The charge time of capacitor
C1 is also dependent on the
accuracy desired from the
device. The percent accuracy
and its required RC time
constant are summarized
Accuracy Charge time
10 2.3
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0.1
0.01
Two Basic techniques that perform sampling function

For the sample-and-hold circuit shown in

Figure above, determine the largest-value
capacitor that can be used. Use an output
impedance for Z1 of 10 Ω, an on resistance for
Q1 of 10 Ω, an acquisition time of 10 μs, a
maximum peak-to-peak input voltage of 10 V, a
maximum output current from Z1 of 10 mA, and
an accuracy of 1%
Sampling Rate
• The Nyquist sampling theorem establishes
the minimum sampling rate (fs) that can be The minimum Nyquist
used for a given PCM system. sampling rate is
• For a sample to be reproduced accurately in
a PCM receiver, each cycle of the analog
input signal (fa) must be sampled at least
fs = minimum Nyquist
twice.
• Consequently, the minimum sampling rate is sample rate (hertz)
equal to twice the highest audio input
frequency.
fa = maximum analog input
• If fs is less than two times fa, an impairment frequency (hertz)
called alias or foldover distortion occurs.
Sampling Rate

The minimum Nyquist

sampling rate is

fs = minimum Nyquist
sample rate (hertz)
fa = maximum analog input
frequency (hertz)
Sampling Rate
Example;
For a PCM system with a maximum audio input frequency of 4
kHz, determine the minimum sample rate and the alias
frequency produced if a 5-kHz audio signal were allowed to
enter the sample-andhold circuit.
Quantization • The second step in the conversion process is
quantization.
• Quantization involves assigning a digital value to
each sample of the analog signal.
• The process of quantization involves dividing the
input voltage range into a finite number of
discrete steps.
• Each step is assigned a digital value, which
represents the voltage of the input signal at that
point in time.
• The more steps in the quantization process, the
more accurate the digital representation of the
analog signal.
Quantization
• Assigning PCM code to
absolute magnitudes is called
quantizing.
• The magnitude of a quantum is
also called resolution.
• The resolution is equal to the
voltage of the minimum step
size which is equal to the least
significant bit (LSB) of the PCM
code.
Quantization
• The figure above shows an analog input signal,
the sampling pulse, the corresponding For example, in the previous figure,
quantized signal (PAM) and the PCM code for t3 is measured to be 2.6V. The
each sample. folded PCM code is
• Each sample voltage is rounded off (quantized)
available level and then converted to its
corresponding PCM code. There is no PCM code for 2.6,
• The PAM signal in the transmitter is essentially so it will be rounded off to the
nearest valid code which is 111, or
the same PAM signal produced in the receiver.
+3. Therefore, the rounding off
• Therefore, any round off errors in the error or quantizing error is 0.4 V
transmitted signals are produced when the
code is converted back to analog in the
receiver. Such error is called quantization error.
Quantization The Quantized error is given by the difference between quantized value and normalized PAM value.

The following are the steps in Quantization:

•We assume that the signal has amplitudes between Vmax and Vmin
•We divide it into L zones each of height d where, d= (Vmax- Vmin)/ L
•The value at the top of each sample in the graph shows the actual amplitude.
•The normalized pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) value is calculated using
the formula amplitude/d.
•After this we calculate the quantized value which the process selects from the
middle of each zone.
Quantization The Quantized error is given by the difference between quantized value and normalized PAM value.
Quantization

1.For a 4 bit PCM code code having a maximum voltage of 5V and a

minimum of -5V. a. determine the resolution, b. What will be the
quantized voltage, quantization error (Qe) and PCM code for the
analog sample voltage of 1.07V, 2.35V, and -1.65V.
Quantization

• Quantization is essential because it ensures that the digital

representation of the analog signal is accurate and precise.
• Without quantization, the digital representation of the analog
signal would be continuous, and it would be impossible to store or
process the signal using digital devices.
Encoding

The final step in the conversion process is encoding.

Encoding involves converting the digital values produced by the
quantization process into binary code that can be stored and processed
by computers and other digital devices.
The most common encoding method is the binary code, where each
digital value is represented by a string of 1's and 0's.
Encoding

• Encoding is critical because it allows the digital representation of the

analog signal to be stored and processed by computers and other
digital devices.
• Without encoding, the digital representation of the analog signal
would be meaningless to digital devices, and it would be impossible
to use the signal for any practical purpose.
Encoding

• Encoding is critical because it allows the digital representation of the

analog signal to be stored and processed by computers and other
digital devices.
• Without encoding, the digital representation of the analog signal
would be meaningless to digital devices, and it would be impossible
to use the signal for any practical purpose.
Delta Modulation

• Encoding is critical because it allows the digital representation of the

analog signal to be stored and processed by computers and other
digital devices.
• Without encoding, the digital representation of the analog signal
would be meaningless to digital devices, and it would be impossible
to use the signal for any practical purpose.