Communications systems

Sina Vafi School of Engineering and Information technology

Communication systems
A communication system conveys information (or generally message) from its source to a destination. Message categories: Analogue Digital

Analogue message: It is a physical quantity that varies with time, usually in a smooth and continuous form. Digital message: It is an ordered sequence of symbols selected from a finite set of discrete elements. Examples of Input signal: Voice (speech source) Picture (image source) Plain text Essential feature of any source: Its output can be described in probabilistic term (output of a source is not deterministic)

Input/output transducer: Input transducer converts the output of a source information into an electrical signal suitable for transmission. Microphone serves as an transducer. (converts an acoustic speech signal into an electrical signal) Output transducers function is in reverse with input transducer; It converts electrical signal to a format suitable for user. Transmitter: It converts the electrical signal into a form that is suitable for transmission through the physical channel or transmission medium. Conversion is accomplished by modulation techniques. Modulation types: Amplitude Modulation (AM) Phase Modulation (PM) Frequency Modulation (FM) Factors for selection of modulation type: 1. Allocated bandwidth 2. Types of noise and interference 3. Electronic devices that are available for signal amplification prior to transmission

Modulation benefits and applications:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Modulation for efficient transmission. Modulation to overcome hardware limitation. Modulation to reduce the noise and interference. Modulation for frequency assignment. Modulation for multiplexing.

Channel
A physical medium that is used to send the signal from the transmitter to the receiver. Channel types: pair of wires, coaxial cables, radio wave, laser beam. Physical medium for signal transmission is corrupted in a random manner by a variety of possible mechanisms. Every channel introduces some amount of transmission loss or attenuation. Signal power progressively decreases with increasing distance.

Channel types: 1. Wired-line channel: It carries the electrical signal. Twisted pair or coaxial cables Twisted pair bandwidth: up to multi KHz Coaxial cable bandwidth: up to multi MHz. 2. Optical Fibre: It carries information through the modulated light beam. Bandwidth: several orders of the bandwidth of coaxial cable. Low attenuation, high reliability for the signal generation and detection. 3. Wireless (free space): Signal is radiated through the antenna. Antenna size: depends on the frequency operation Wireless transmission types: Line of sight (LOS) propagation: for the VLF and ELF frequency bands Ground-wave propagation: for the MF band (0.3 to 30 MHz) (AM broadcasting) Sky wave propagation: propagation through ionosphere (coverage: 30-250 miles) 4. Satellite: For the transmission of signals having frequency higher than 30 MHz (40-300 MHz).

Receiver: It recovers the message signal contained in the received signal. Receiver functions: 1. Amplification: It amplifies the signal received from the channel to compensate the transmission loss. 2. Signal demodulation and decoding: it reverses the signal processing performed at the transmitter. 3. Filtering

Unwanted undesirable effects on signal transmission: 1. Signal attenuation It reduces the signal strength. 2. Distortion Waveform perturbation caused by imperfect response of the system to the desired signal itself. 3. Noise Random and unpredictable electrical signals created by natural resources. 4. Interference Unwanted signal generated from human sources.

Fundamental limitations for designing a communication systems:

Technological problems: Hardware availability, economic factors. Physical limitations 1. Bandwidth 1.1- Bandwidth has directly related to the frequency operation of the communication system. 1.2- Every communication system requires sufficient transmission bandwidth to accommodate the signal spectrum. Otherwise severe distortion will result. 2. Noise: Unwanted signal 2.1- It is found in all types of transmission systems. 2.2- Thermal noise is the most effective type of noise. It occurs randomly due to the random motion of charged particles such as random currents or voltages. 2.3- Noise measurement: It is calculated in terms of signal to noise power ratio (S/N).

Channel capacity: Shannon stated that the rate of information transmission can not exceed the channel capacity. Channel capacity (C) : C=B log(1+S/N) B: Bandwidth channel S/N: Signal to noise ratio.