Digital Communication

Mr. Sajid Gul Khawaja

Overview
Course Information
Course Schedule
Prerequisites
Books

Scoring\Grading
Expectations
Digital Systems
Introduction to digital communication systems

Course Info
Prerequisites
Probability and random variables
Digital Signal Processing
Course materials
Course text books:
Communication Systems Engineering, by John G. Proakis and
Masoud Salehi, Prentice Hall, 2002, 2nd edition, ISBN: 0-13-095007-6
Principles of Digital Communications, Gallager
Digital Communications: Fundamentals and Applications by
Bernard Sklar,Prentice Hall, 2001, ISBN: 0-13-084788-7
Communication Systems by Simon Haykin 4th Edition

Additional recommended books:

Digital Communications, by Ian A. Glover and Peter M. Grant,
Pearson, Prentice Hall, 2004, 2nd edition, ISBN: 0-13-089399-4

Course Schedule
14-16 lectures
2-4 Quizzes
2-4 home assignments
Written assignments may not be graded

2 Sessional Exams
Practical Work
Final Exam

Score/Grading
Tentative marks division
2 Sessional Exams

25~30%

Reading Assignments

5~10%

Quizzes

5%

Practical

20~25%

Lab
Project

Final Examination

40~45%

Expectations/Objectives
Mine
Deliver the concepts of digital communications
Understand the following about the different blocks of
digital communication
What
Why
When
How

Eventually forming a prototype system

Yours
Getting through this course (majority)
Getting an A
Learn something new

Course Outline
Introduction to DC
Some Probability Theory
Probability space, random variables, density functions,
independence
Expectation, conditional expectation, Bayes rule
Stochastic processes, autocorrelation function, stationary,
spectral density

Source Coding
Measuring information, entropy, the source coding
theorem
Huffman coding, Run-length coding, Lempel-Ziv etc.

Analog-to-digital conversion
Sampling (ideal, natural, sample-and-hold)
Quantization, PCM

Communication channels
Band-limited channels
The AWGN channel, fading channels

Receiver design
General binary and M-ary signaling
Maximum-likelihood receivers
Performance in an AWGN channel
The Chernoff and union/Chernoff bounds
Simulation techniques

Signal spaces
Modulation: PAM, QAM, PSK, DPSK, coherent FSK,
incoherent FSK

Channel coding
Block codes, hard and soft-decision decoding,
performance
Convolutional codes, the Viterbi algorithm,
performance bounds
Trellis-coded modulation (TCM)

Signaling through bandlimited channels

ISI, Nyquist pulses, sequence estimation, partial
response signaling
Equalization

Signaling through fading channels

Rayleigh fading, optimum receiver, performance
Interleaving

Synchronization or Link Estimation

Symbol synchronization
Frame synchronization
Carrier synchronization

What is Digital
Communication?

Digital Communications
Digital Communication:
Enormous and normally rapidly growing industry

Objective:
Study those aspects of communication systems
unique to those systems. Little focus on hardware
or software
Hardware and software are similar to other
systems.

Basis of Digital Communication

Information theory, developed in 1948 by
Claude Shannon
Reading Assignment
A Mathematical Theory of Communication By C.
E. SHANNON

Complex relationship between modeling, theory,

exercises, and engineering/design.
Use very simple models to understand ideas. This
generates powerful general theorems plus insights
into more complex models and thus reality.
Exercises aimed at understanding the principles
getting the right answer is not the point since the
model is oversimplified.
Engineering deals with approximations and
judgment calls based on multiple simple models
(insights).

Since the exercises apply only to simple

models, they dont apply directly to real
systems.
You have to understand the exercise at a gut
level to see how to use the idea.
This is why you should discuss the exercises
with other students getting the correct
answer by pattern matching and manipulation
is not the point.

Everyday communication systems (the

telephone system, the Internet) have
incredible complexity.
Must be designed and understood based on
simple architectural principles.
Standardized interfaces and layering are key.

Why Digital Communication?

Device Challenges
Analog and RF Components
A/D Converters
Size, Power, Cost
Multiple Antennas
Multiradio Coexistance
These challenges may
someday be completely
solved by a
software-defined radio

A/D
A/D
A/D
A/D

DSP

BT
FM/XM

Cellular

GPS
DVB-H

Apps
Processor

WLAN

Media
Processor

Wimax

Design Challenges
Hardware Design
Precise components
Small, lightweight, low power
Cheap
High frequency operation

System Design
Converting and transferring information
High data rates
Robust to noise and interference
Supports many users

Network Design
Connectivity and high speed
Energy and delay constraints

Advantages of Digital Systems

Error correction/detection
Better encryption algorithms: Can not be
done in analog communication
More reliable data processing
Easily reproducible designs
Reduced cost

Easier data multiplexing

Facilitate data compression

Disadvantages:
Heavy signal processing
Synchronization is crucial
Larger transmission bandwidth
Non-graceful degradation

Goals in Communication System Design

To maximize transmission rate, R

To maximize system utilization, U

To minimize bit error rate, Pe
To minimize required systems bandwidth, W
To minimize system complexity, Cx
To minimize required power, Eb/No

23

Pe

cx Eb/No

Where is Digital Communication

Embedded in a Digital System?

Data Network Protocols

and the OSI Model

Examples of Digital System

from everyday life

Communication Systems
Provide for electronic exchange of multimedia data
Voice, data, video, music, email, web pages, etc.

Communication Systems Today

Radio and TV broadcasting
Public Switched Telephone Network (voice,fax,modem)
Cellular Phones
Computer networks (LANs, WANs, and the Internet)
Satellite systems (pagers, voice/data, movie broadcasts)
Bluetooth

An Overview of the Digital

System

Main Points
Communication systems send information
electronically over communication channels
Many different types of systems which convey
many different types of information
Design challenges include hardware, system, and
network issues
Communication systems recreate transmitted
information at receiver with high fidelity
Focus of this class is design and performance of
analog and digital communication systems

Information Source and Sinks

Information Source and Input Transducer:
The source of information can be analog or digital,
Analog: audio or video signal,
Digital: like teletype signal.

In digital communication the signal produced by

this source is converted into digital signal consists
of 1s and 0s.

Output Transducer:
The signal in desired format analog or digital at
the output

Channel
Channel:
The communication channel is the physical
medium that is used for transmitting signals from
transmitter to receiver
Wireless channels: Wireless Systems
Wired Channels: Telephony

Channel discrimination on the basis of their

property and characteristics, like AWGN channel

etc.

Source Encoder and Decoder

Source Encoder
In digital communication we convert the signal from source into
digital signal. The point to remember is we should like to use as
few binary digits as possible to represent the signal. In such a
way this efficient representation of the source output results in
little or no redundancy. This sequence of binary digits is
called information sequence.
Source Encoding or Data Compression: the process of
efficiently converting the output of wither analog or digital source
into a sequence of binary digits is known as source encoding.

Source Decoder
At the end, if an analog signal is desired then source decoder
tries to decode the sequence from the knowledge of the encoding
algorithm. And which results in the approximate replica of the
input at the transmitter end

Channel Encoder and Decoder

Channel Encoder:
The information sequence is passed through the channel encoder. The
purpose of the channel encoder is to introduce, in controlled manner,
some redundancy in the binary information sequence that can be used
at the receiver to overcome the effects of noise and interference
encountered in the transmission on the signal through the channel.
e.g. take k bits of the information sequence and map that k bits to unique
n bit sequence called code word. The amount of redundancy introduced
is measured by the ratio n/k and the reciprocal of this ratio (k/n) is known
as rate of code or code rate.

Channel Decoder:
Channel decoder attempts to reconstruct the original information
sequence from the knowledge of the code used by the channel encoder
and the redundancy contained in the received data

Digital Modulator and Demodulator

Digital Modulator:
The binary sequence is passed to digital modulator
which in turns convert the sequence into electric
signals so that we can transmit them on channel. The
digital modulator maps the binary sequences into
signal wave forms , for example if we represent 1 by
sin x and 0 by cos x then we will transmit sin x for 1
and cos x for 0.

Digital Demodulator:
The digital demodulator processes the channel
corrupted transmitted waveform and reduces the
waveform to the sequence of numbers that represents
estimates of the transmitted data symbols.

The Main Points

The point worth noting are :
The source coding algorithm plays an important role
in higher code rate
The channel encoder introduce redundancy in data
The modulation scheme plays important role in
deciding the data rate and immunity of signal towards
the errors introduced by the channel
Channel can introduce many types of errors due to
thermal noise etc.
The demodulator and decoder should provide high
Bit Error Rate (BER).

Block Diagram of a Digital

System

Step Wise

Layering of Source Coding

Source coding includes
Sampling
Quantization
Symbols to bits
Compression

Decoding includes
Decompression
Bits to symbols
Symbols to sequence of numbers
Sequence to waveform (Reconstruction)

Layering of Source Coding

Layering of Channel Coding

Channel Coding is divided into
Discrete encoder\Decoder
Used to correct channel Errors

Modulation\Demodulation
Used to map bits to waveform for transmission

Layering of Channel Coding