EEE 309

Communication Theory
Instructor: Tishna Sabrina
Summer 2016
Lecture 16
Quantization

Issues in Quantization

Recall that, .

SNR is an indication of the quality of the received signal.

Problems with uniform quantization:
1.
Only optimal for uniformly distributed signal.
2.
Many signals such as speech have a non uniform distribution.
3.
Real audio signals (speech and music) are more concentrated
near zeros.
4.
Human ear is more sensitive to quantization errors at small
values
Solution using non uniform quantization quantization interval is
smaller near zero.

8/3/2016

Communication Theory: Lecture 16

Non Uniform Quantization

The quantization noise

is directly proportional to the square
of the step size.
So the solution uses smaller steps for smaller amplitudes (non uniform
quantization).
The same result is obtained by first compressing the signal sample and then
using a uniform quantization.

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Communication Theory: Lecture 16

Signal Compression for Equalizing SNR

The horizontal axis is the normalized input signal (

).
The vertical axis is the output signal y.
The compressor maps input signal increment
into larger increments
for for small input signals and vice versa for large input signals.
Hence, a given interval
contains a larger number of steps or smaller
step size when m is small.
The quantization noise is lower for smaller input signal power.
Among several choices, 2 compression
laws have been accepted by the ITU-T:
1.
The -law: used in NA & Japan
2.
The A-law: used in Europe & rest
Both the curves have odd symmetry
about the vertical axis.
This approach of equalizing SNR appears
similar to the use of progressive income tax to equalize incomes.

8/3/2016

Communication Theory: Lecture 16

Compression Laws

The -law for positive amplitudes,

The A-law for positive amplitudes,

The compression parameter or A determines the

degree of compression.
To obtain a nearly constant SNR over a dynamic range
of 40dB input power, should be greater than 100.
For all NA 8-bit digital terminals, an optimum value
=255 has been used.
For the A-law, A=87.6 gives comparable results and
has been standardized by ITU-T.

8/3/2016

Communication Theory: Lecture 16

Compandor

The compressed samples must be restored to their original values at the

receiver by using an expander with a characteristic complementary to
that of the compressor.
The compressor and the expander together are called Compandor.
Generally time compression of a signal increases its BW.
But in PCM, we are compressing not the signal m(t) in time but its
sample values.
As neither the time scale nor the number
of samples changes, the problem of BW
increase does not arise here.
When a -law compandor is used, the
output SNR is,

8/3/2016

Communication Theory: Lecture 16