Telephony Signal Transmission Basic Impairments Two-Wire and FourWire Transmission Systems

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The nominal voice channel occupies the band from

The basic building block for transmission is the telephone channel or voice channel.

0 to 4 kHz.

CCITT defines the voice channel as the band of frequencies between

300 and 3400

Bell Laboratories states that the optimum trade-off between economics and quality transmission occurs when the telephone speech signal is band-limited to the range from about
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Hz.

200 to 3200 Hz.

There are three basic impairments we must deal with regarding the voice channel.

Two additional impairments are:

Attenuation distortion Phase distortion Nois e

Echo and Singing.

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THE THREE BASIC IMPAIRMENTS TO VOICE CHANNEL TRANSMISSION

Attenuation Distortion

It is the result of imperfect amplitude-frequency response. Attenuation distortion can be avoided if all frequencies within the passband are subjected to exactly the same loss (or gain) On loaded wire-pair systems, higher frequencies are attenuated more than lower ones.
Attenuation distortion across the voice channel is measured against a reference frequency.
800 Hz as a reference, which is universally used in Europe, Africa, and parts of Hispanic America. 1000 Hz is the common reference frequency in North America 3/13/13

Typical attenuationfrequency response (attenuation distortion) for a voice channel. Hatched areas show 3/13/13 specified limits.

Attenuation increases as the band edges are approached.

European requirement may state that between 600 Hz and 2800 Hz the level will vary no more than 1 to +2 dB. where the plus sign means more loss and the minus sign means less loss.

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Decibel Units
Attenuation (reduction) of the signal strength arises from various loss mechanisms in a transmission medium.
For example:

Electric power is lost through heat generation as an electric signal flows along a wire.

To compensate for these energy losses, amplifiers are used periodically along a channel to boost the signal level, as shown in next slide.
A standard and convenient method for measuring attenuation through a link or a device is to reference the output signal level to the input level. 3/13/13

Decibel Units

Periodically placed amplifiers compensate for energy losses along a link

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Decibel Units
For guided media : The signal strength normally decays exponentially. For convenience it is designated in logarithmic power ratio measured in decibels (dB). The dB unit is defined by

Power ratio in dB = 10 log (P2/P1)

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Decibel Units
Representative values of decibel power loss and the remaining percentages

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Q1: After traveling a certain distance

in some transmission medium, the power of a signal is reduced to half at point 2, that is

P2= 0.5P1.

what is the attenuation or loss of power at point 2?

Q2: Consider the transmission path from point 1 to point 4 shown in

fig below. Here the signal attenuated by 9 dB between point 1 and 2. After getting a 14 dB boost from an amplifier at point 3, it is again attenuated by 3 dB between points 3 and 4.what is the dB level at point 4?

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Phase Distortion

A voice channel may be regarded as a bandpass filter. Propagation time is different for different frequencies. The velocity of propagation also tends to vary with frequency because of the electrical characteristics associated with the network.

Considering the voice channel, therefore, the velocity of propagation tends to increase toward band center and decrease toward band edge.

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Absolute delay is minimum around 1700 and 1800 Hz in the voice channel. Around 1700 or 1800 Hz, envelope delay distortion is flattest. It is for this reason that so many data modems use 1700 or 1800 Hz for the characteristic tone frequency which 3/13/13 is modulated by the data.

Phase Distortion

A modulated signal will not be distorted on passing through the channel if the phase shift changes uniformly with frequency. whereas if the phase shift is nonlinear with respect to frequency, the output signal is distorted compared to the input.

This phase distortion is often measured by a parameter called envelope delay distortion (EDD). The maximum difference in the derivative over any frequency interval is called envelope delay distortion.
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Nois e Any undesired signal in a communication circuit It is the major limiting factor in system performance.

Noise is broken down into four categories:

1. 2. 3. 4.

Thermal noise Intermodulation noise Crosstalk Impulse noise

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Nois e Thermal Noise

Thermal noise occurs in all transmission media and all communication equipment, including passive devices. It arises from random electron motion and is characterized by a uniform distribution of energy over the frequency spectrum with a Gaussian distribution of levels. Thermal noise is the factor that sets the lower limit of sensitivity of a receiving system Thermal noise is directly proportional to bandwidth and temperature.
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Nois e Intermodulation Noise.

Intermodulation (IM) noise is the result of the presence of intermodulation products If two signals with frequencies F1 and F2 are passed through a nonlinear device or medium, the result will contain IM products that are spurious frequency energy components. Intermodulation noise may result from a number of causes: Improper level setting. If the level of input to a device is too high, the device is driven into its nonlinear operating region. Improper alignment causing a device to function nonlinearly. 3/13/13 Nonlinear envelope delay.

Nois e Crosst Unwanted coupling between alk signal paths. There are essentially three causes of crosstalk: 1-Electrical coupling between transmission media,
such as between wire pairs on a voice-frequency (VF) cable system. of frequency response (i.e., defective 2-Poor control filters or poor filter design). 3-Nonlinear performance in analog (FDM) multiplex systems.

There are two types of crosstalk: 1. Intelligible: Where at least four words are

intelligible to the listener from extraneous conversation in a 7-s period. 2. Unintelligible: Crosstalk resulting from any other form of disturbing effects of one channel on another.
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Nois e Crosst alk

Intelligible crosstalk presents the greatest impairment because of its distraction to the listener.

Distraction is considered to be caused either by fear of loss of privacy

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Nois e Impulse Noise

Impulse noise is noncontinuous, consisting of irregular pulses or noise spikes of short duration, broad spectral density, and relatively high amplitude. Impulse noise degrades telephony ordinarily only marginally. It may seriously degrade data error performance on data or other digital 3/13/13 waveforms.

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Lev el
q

Level means signal magnitude. Level could be In telephony it is measured in dBm comparative

(decibels referenced to 1 milliwatt) or in milliamperes. In radio (wireless) systems, it is more likely measured in dBW
q

(decibels referenced to 12 watts ) ? video systems (e.g., television), the unit of measure is voltage. The commonly derived unit is the dBmV
q

Meaning decibels referenced to 1 millivolt.

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Lev el levels are too high, amplifiers become If

overloaded, resulting in intermodulation and other types of distortion such as crosstalk If levels are too low, customer satisfaction may suffer with a degraded loudness rating.

The power in dBm is an absolute value defined by: Power level (in dBm)= 10 log ( P in mW / 1 mW) 0 dBm = 1mW.
positive values of dBm are greater than 1mW. Negative values are less than 1mW.
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Signal-to-Noise Ratio
S/N ratio expresses in decibels the amount by which a signal level exceeds the noise within a specified bandwidth. Minimum S/N ratio is required to satisfy the customer or to make the receiving instrument function within certain specified criteria. Following S/N ratios required with the corresponding end instruments

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Signal-to-Noise Ratio

A 1000-Hz signal has an S/N ratio of 10 dB The level of the noise is +5 dBm, and the signal level is +15 dBm

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Signal-to-Noise Ratio Individual talker signal power can fluctuate widely so that S/N ratio is far from constant from telephone call to telephone call. In lieu of actual voice, a test tone is used to measure level and S/N ratio, which has a constant amplitude and no silent intervals

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TWO-WIRE AND FOUR-WIRE TRANSMISSION Two-Wire Transmission When both directions are carried on the same pair of wires, it is called two-wire transmission.
OR

when oppositely directed portions of a single telephone conversation occur over the same electrical transmission channel or path, we call this two-wire operation.

The telephones in our homes and offices are connected to a local switching center by means of two-wire circuits.
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TWO-WIRE AND FOUR-WIRE TRANSMISSION Four-Wire Transmission Carrier and radio systems require that oppositely directed portions of a single conversation occur over separate transmission channels or paths. Two wires for the transmit path and two wires for the receive path. Output of the local serving exchange towards the toll network is four-wire. The four-wire interconnection could be a multichannel digital carrier system on cable, fiber-optic light guide, or multiplex over radio.
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A typical long-distance (toll) 3/13/13 telephone connection

TWO-WIRE AND FOUR-WIRE TRANSMISSION Operation of a Hybrid Hybrid in terms of telephony is a transformer. Hybrid may be viewed as a power splitter with four sets of wire-pair connections.

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Operation of a Hybrid qSignal energy entering from the two-wire subset connection divides equally, half of it dissipating in the impedance of the four-wire side receive path and the other half going to the four-wire side transmit path. The balancing network is supposed to display the characteristic impedance of the two-wire line to the hybrid qSignal energy entering from the four-wire side receive path is also split in half in the ideal situation where there is perfect balance. Half of the energy is dissipated by the balancing network (N) and half at the two-wire port (L).
q

In every case, ideally half of the signal energy entering the hybrid is used to advantage and half is dissipated or wasted. 3/13/13

Operation of a Hybrid There are two losses associated with Hybrid Hybrid insertion loss 0.5 dB Hybrid dissipation loss 3.0 dB (half of 3.5 dB the power) Any signal passing through a (total) suffers a hybrid 3.5-dB loss Impedance matching on the two-wire side is important . That is the match between the compromise network (N) and the two-wire side (L). The capability of impedance match is measured by return loss. In this particular Case it is called balance return loss:
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Block diagram of two-wire-to-four-wire conversion using a hybrid

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