Signal Encoding

Techniques
Lecture Learning Outcomes
 Be able to understand, appreciate and
differentiate the different signal encoding
criteria available.
Class Contents
Signal Encoding Criteria

Digital Data, Analogue Signals

• ASK
• FSK
• PSK
• QAM
Analogue Data, Analogue Signals
• AM
• Angle Modulation
Analogue Data, Digital Signals
• PCM
• Delta Modulation
Signal Encoding Criteria
Encoding is referred in general to the process of conversion
Of analogue or digital data into analogue or digital signals
Signal Encoding Criteria
 Wireless communications relevant techniques:

 Digital to Analogue Conversion

 Analogue to Analogue Conversion
 Digital to Digital Conversion

 Most important factor in determining how successful was

the interpretation of the signal:

 SNR or Eb/N0
 Data Rate (R)
 Bandwidth (B)
 Signal Encoding Criteria

Term Units Definition

Data Element Bits A single binary one or zero
Data Rate Bits per second (bps) The rate at which data
elements are transmitted
Signal Element Digital: a voltage pulse of That part of a signal that
constant amplitude. occupies the shortest interval
Analogue: a pulse of constant of a signalling code.
frequency, phase and
amplitude
Signalling Rate or Signal elements per second The rate at which signal
Modulation Rate (bauds) elements are transmitted.
Digital Data to Analogue Signals
The principle of operation compromises the representation
of a digital data stream using an analogue signal

 Amplitude Shift-Keying

 Frequency Shift-Keying

 Phase Shift-Keying

 Quadrature and Amplitude Modulation

Amplitude Shift-Keying (ASK)
Transmitted signal for 1 bit time

 A  cos( 2    f c  t ) binary 1
s(t )  
0 binary 0
Frequency Shift-Keying (FSK)
Also known as Binary FSK (BFSK)

Transmitted signal for 1 bit time

 A  cos(2    f1  t ) binary 1
s(t )  
 A  cos(2    f 2  t ) binary 0
Multilevel FSK (MFSK)
Signal more bandwidth efficient, but more susceptible to error.

More than 2 frequencies are used to represent multiple levels of the

signal.

Each signal element represent more than 1 bit

MFSK for 1 element:

MFSK s(t )  A  cos( 2    f i  t ) 1 i  M
f i  f c  (2  i  1  M ) f d
f c  carrier frequency
f d  difference frequency
M  number of different signal elements  2 L
L  number of bits per signal element
Phase Shift-Keying (PSK)
Phase of the carrier shifted 1800. Also known as binary PSK (BPSK)

Transmitted signal for 1 bit time

 A  cos( 2    f c  t )  A  cos(2    f c  t ) binary 1

BPSK s(t )   
 A  cos( 2    f c  t   )  A  cos( 2    f c  t ) binary 0
Differential Phase Shift-Keying (PSK)
Alternative form of PSK. For a binary 0, the phase is the same as
In the previous bit. For a binary 1, the phase changes 1800.

Transmitted signal for 1 bit time

Quadrature Phase Shift-Keying (QPSK)

• When the phase shifts occurs at 900 it is called

QPSK

• Each signal element is represented by 2 bits.

 A  cos2    f c  t   4 11
 A  cos2    f  t  3 4
 01
s(t )   c

 A  cos2    f c  t  3 4 00
 A  cos2    f c  t   4 10
Quadrature Phase Shift-Keying (QPSK)

the amplitudes of the binary 1 and 0 are scaled and represented by

1 2 and  1 2 respectively

 I(t )  cos2    f c  t    Q(t )  sin 2    f c  t 

1 1
s(t ) 
2 2
Multilevel Phase Shift-Keying (QPSK)
 The use of multiple levels can be extended taking more than 2
Bits at a time and decreasing the phase angle used.

 Further, each angle taken can have more than one amplitude.

Example:

a standard 9600 bps modem uses 12 phase angles, four of which have
two amplitude values for a total of 16 different signal elements
Multilevel Phase Shift-Keying (QPSK)

Data Rate and Modulation Rate

Lets assume a bit stream of 1s and 0s at a data rate of R=1/tb.

The encoded signal contains (L=4) bits in each signal element
using M=16 different combinations of amplitude and phase.
The modulation rate can be seen to be R/4, because each change
of signal element communicates 4 bits. Therefore, the line
signalling speed is 2400 bauds, but the data rate is 9600 bps

D = modulation rate in bauds

R R
D  R = data rate in bps
L log 2 M M = number of different signal elements = 2L
L = number of bits per signal element
Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM)

s(t )  d1 (t )  cos2    f c  t   d 2 (t )  sin 2    f c  t 

QAM is a combination of ASK and PSK. It is based on the fact that

two signals can be transmitted simultaneously on the same carrier
frequency, by using two copies of the carrier frequency,
one shifted 90 with respect to the other
Analogue Data to Analogue Signals
Modulation is the process of combining an input signal m(t)
And a carrier frequency fc to produce a signal s(t) whose
Bandwidth is usually centred in fc

Reasons to do Analogue Modulation of Analogue

Signals

 Higher frequency needed for effective transmission

 Modulation permits frequency division multiplexing, which

is an important technique used to transmit signals
simultaneously over the same communications channel.
Amplitude Modulation (AM)

The amplitude of the carrier signal is altered using as guide

the modulating (baseband) signal (m(t)). This signal is of lower
frequency than the carrier.

s(t )  [1  na  x(t )]  cos2    f c  t 

Where cos(2..f.t) is the carrier frequency and x(t) is the input signal,
both normalized to unity amplitude.

The parameter na is known as the modulation index, is the ratio of

the amplitude of the input signal to the carrier.
Amplitude Modulation (AM)

Time Domain Frequency Domain

Amplitude Modulation (AM)

Power Relationship in AM:

 na 2 
Pt  Pc  1  

 2 

where Pt is the transmitted power in s(t), Pc is the transmitted power

in the carrier.

The ideal would be that most of the signal power is used to transmit
information (that is na as big as possible), however, na must remain
below 1 to avoid loss of information.
 Angle Modulation

Frequency modulation (FM) and phase modulation (PM) are special cases
for angle modulation

Modulated Signal:

s(t )  AC  cos(2    f c  t )   (t )

For phase modulation, the phase is proportional to the modulating signal:

 (t )  n p  m(t )
where n p is the phase modulation index
Angle Modulation (AM)
For frequency modulation (FM), the time derivative of the phase
is proportional to the modulating signal:

d (t )
  ' (t )  n f  m(t )
dt
where n f is the frequency modulation index

Bandwidth Comparison:

AM: BT=2.B

Angle modulation includes a term of the form cos(t), which is non linear
And will produce a wide range of frequencies.
Bandwidth for Angle Modulation

In practice, a good approximation to the bandwidth in angle modulation

is known as the Carson’s rule

BT  2    1  B
n p  Am for PM

   f n f  Am
 B  2    B for FM

Both FM and PM require greater bandwidth than AM

Digital Data to Digital Signals
This process should be written as the conversion of analogue
Data into digital data. This process is known as digitalization.

Once data have been digitalized, the 3 most common things that
happens next are:
 The digital signal can be transmitted using NRZ-L. In this
case the process has gone from analogue data to a
digital signal.

 The signal can be encoded as a digital signal using a

code different from NRZ-L. This process requires an
extra step

 The digital data can be converted into an analogue

signal using one of the modulation techniques previously
discussed (ASK,FSK,etc.)
Digital Data to Digital Signals

 The device used for converting analogue data into digital

signals is called CODEC. The two principal CODEC
techniques are:

 Pulse Code Modulation

 Delta Modulation
Pulse Code Modulation
It is based on the sampling theorem which states:

“If a signal f(t) is sampled at regular intervals of time and at a

rate higher than twice the highest signal frequency, then the
samples contain all the information of the original signal.

The function f(t) may be reconstructed from these samples

by the use of a low-pass filter”.

The samples taken from the analogue signal are analogue samples
called pulse amplitude modulation (PAM), to convert them to digital;
each of these samples should be assigned a binary code.
Pulse Code Modulation

A 8 D 8
B 15 E 6
C 12 F 6
Sample Quantization
Level Assigned
Pulse Code Modulation
Using 16 levels in the sampling process, a digital binary signal coded
in 4 bits is needed to represent all the possible sample levels.

Sample Binary Sample Binary Sample Binary Sample Binary

Code Code Code Code
0 0000 4 0100 8 1000 12 1100
1 0001 5 0101 9 1001 13 1101
2 0010 6 0110 10 1010 14 1110
3 0011 7 0111 11 1011 15 1111

The resulting PCM bit stream for the above example is:

100011111100100001100110
 Pulse Code Modulation
• Typically, the PCM scheme is refined using a technique known as
nonlinear encoding, which means that the quantization levels are not
equally spaced.

• The main problem with equal spacing is that the mean absolute error
for each sample is the same, regardless of signal level. Consequently,
lower amplitude values are relatively more distorted.

• The same effect (as non-linear encoding) can be achieved by using

uniform quantization but companding (compressing-expanding) the input
analogue signal.

• Companding is a process that compresses the intensity range of a signal

by imparting more gain to weak signals than to strong signals on input.
At output, the reverse operation is performed.

• Non-linear encoding can significantly improve the PCM SNR ratio.

For voice signals, improvements of 24 to 30 dB have been achieved.
Delta Modulation
It is an alternative technique to PCM. It is easier to implement than PCM

In DM, an analogue signal is approximated by a staircase function that

moves up or down by one quantization level (d) at each sampling interval TS.

At each sampling time, the function moves up or down a constant amount d.

Thus, the output of the delta modulation can be represented as a single
binary digit for each sample.
 Delta Modulation

With this technique, a bit stream is produced by approximating the

derivative of an analogue signal rather than its amplitude.

A binary 1 is produced is the staircase function is to go up in the next interval,

and a 0 is generated otherwise:
Delta Modulation

The two important parameters in delta modulation are:

 The size of the step assigned to each binary digit (d)

 The sampling rate.

Delta Modulation

There are two types of error:

Quantization Noise: occurs when the analogue waveform is changing

very slowly. This noise increases as d increases.

Slope Overload Noise: occurs when the analogue signal is changing

so fast that the staircase function can not follow. This noise is increased
as d is decreased.

d must be chosen to produce a balance between the two noise figures.

The principal advantage of DM over PCM is its simplicity in implementation.

However, PCM exhibits better SNR characteristics at the same data rate.