The digital communication receiver requires accurate knowledge of the frequency and phase of the
carrier in the incoming received signal. Why? The receiver has to correlate the received signal with
a locally generated carrier signal, (bank of correlators). This is the demodulation process in the
receiver. But the frequency and phase of the locally generated carrier signal must be same as the
frequency and phase of the incoming carrier signal. Why? Cos and sine waves having the same
frequency are out of phase by 90 degree. As we know, if we correlate a cos with a sine over one
period, the result is zero. The demodulation function will not take place correctly in this case since
the correlator output is zero. This is the reason why there should be agreement in frequency and
phase between the two inputs to the correlator. The process of ensuring that the locally generated
carrier signal has the same frequency and phase as the incoming received signal is called Carrier
Synchronization.
A circuit called the PLL is often used in carrier synchronization. It is a closed-loop control system
consisting of
1) Phase detector (PD) that generates the phase difference between its inputs vi(t) and vo(t).
2) Voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO): It adjusts the oscillator frequency based on the phase
difference to eliminate the phase difference. At steady state, the output frequency will be exactly the
same with the input frequency.
3) Loop filter (LF) is a Lowpass Filter that smoothes the output of the PD.
v i (t )=v i sin [ω 0 t+ φ( t ) ]
¿
v o ( t )=v o cos [ ω0 t+φ (t )]
If F(p)=1,Then
¿
dφ(t )
=K sin φe ( t )
dt
Pilot-carrier method
-insert pilot to the modulated signal
-asin(ct)
cos(ct /2phas
) e shift
0
The pilot signal is generated by shifting the carrier by 90 and decreasing amplitude by
several dB, then adding to the modulated signal. The receiver uses a narrowband filter with
central frequency f to extract the pilot and then the carrier can be generated by simply
c
0
shifting 90 .
The drawback of narrowband filter is that the passband is not narrow enough, fc is fixed, cannot
tolerate any frequency drift with respect to the central frequency. The narrowband filter can be
replaced by a PLL.
1).If the spectrum of the received signal already contains carrier component, then the carrier
component can be extracted simply by a narrowband filter or a PLL.
2).If the modulated signal supresses the carrier component, then the carrier component may be
extracted by performing nonlinear transformation.
Symbol Synchronization
In a digital communication system, the output of the receiving filter must be sampled periodically at
the symbol rate and at the precise sampling time instance.
To perform this periodic sampling, we need a clock signal at the receiver
The process of extracting such a clock signal is called symbol synchronization or timing recovery
One method is for the transmitter to simultaneously transmit the clock frequency along with the
information signal. The receive can simply employ a narrowband filter or PLL to extract it. This
method requires extra power and bandwidth and hence, but frequently used in telephone
transmission systems.
Another method is to extract the clock signal from the received data signal by using some other
means. An important method in this category is the Early-late gate method.
One method for generating a symbol timing signal at the receiver exploits the symmetry properties
of the signal at the output of the matched filter or correlator. The output of the correlator or matched
filter attains the maximum value at t = T. So, the best moment for sampling is the precise moment
when correlator output is maximum. How do we find this precise moment? Noise may be present,
and identification of the peak value of the signal is generally difficult. So instead of sampling the
signal at the peak, suppose we sample early at say, t = T – δT, and then sample late at say, t = T +
δT. Since the two sampling instants are at equal distances from the peak time t = T, the sampled
values at early sampling and late sampling must be equal. Thus if we design a circuit that looks for
a proper value of the delay δT so that early sampling and late sampling values are equal, then the
midpoint of these two sampling times will be the proper sampling time t = T. The optimum delay
δT is obtained by using a PLL circuit as shown in the diagram given below.
Frame synchronization:
Almost all digital data streams have some kind of frame structure. The date stream is organized into
uniformly sized group of bits. For a receiver to make sense of the incoming data stream, the
receiver needs to be synchronized with the data stream’s frame structure. The receiver needs to
know when the frame starts and when the frame ends. This is called frame syncronization. Frame
synchronization is usually accomplished with the help of some special signaling procedure from the
transmitter.
The important frame synchronization codes used are Barker codes and PN sequences. In bunched
frame alignment signal, the transmitter inserts synchronous code at a particular place in each
frame. The code should have a sharp auto-correlation function. In distributed frame
alignment method, the synchronization code is distributed in the data signal. That means
between each n bits, a synchronization bit is inserted.
n Barker code
2 ++
3 ++-
4 + + + - ,+ + - +
5 +++-+
7 +++--+-
11 +++---+--+-
13 ++++--++-+-+