CS2105

Physical Layer

Reference Books
Slides and materials are taken from:
Computer Networks: A Top-Down Approach by
Behrouz A. Forouzan and Firouz
Mosharraf, McGraw-Hill

Topics covered
Data and signals
Analog, digital
Transmission Impairment

Data Rate Limits

Transmission
Digital, analog
Transmission Media

Data and Signals

One of the main functions of the physical layer is
to move data in the form of electro-magnetic
signals across a transmission medium.
Data can be analog or digital.
Analog data refers to information that is
continuous.
Digital data take on discrete values.

Like the data they represent, signals can be

either analog or digital.

Analog Signal
An analog signal has infinitely many levels of
intensity (continuous) over a period of time.

Example: sound waves, electrical signal that varies

in response to changes in light, heat, or pressure.
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Analog Signal (contd)

Signals has both time and frequency domain
representation.
First consider the simplest analog signal in time
domain: a Sine wave

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Physical Layer.8

Time-domain and Frequency-domain

plots of a sine wave

Combination of three sine waves

Another Example

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Fourier analysis is a tool that changes a timedomain signal to a frequency-domain signal and
vice versa.
A composite periodic signal with a period T
(frequency f = 1/T) can be decomposed into a
series of sine (and cosine) functions in which
each function is an integral harmonics of the
fundamental frequency f.

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If the time domain signal is non-periodic, the

signal in frequency domain is continuous.
It takes (infinitely) many frequencies to
represent a non-periodic time domain signal.

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Bandwidth of periodic and a nonperiodic

composite signals is the difference between the
highest and lowest frequencies contained in that
signal.

Bandwidth = 5000 1000 = 4000 Hz

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Digital Signal
A digital signal, on the other hand, can have only
a limited number of defined values, e.g. 0 or 1.

Example?

Digital Signals
Bit Rate:
Duration of a single bit
Number of values a bit can take

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Transmission Impairment
Signals travel through transmission media, which
are not perfect. The imperfection causes signal
impairment
signal at the beginning of the medium is not the
same as the signal at the end of the medium.

Three causes of impairment are

attenuation
distortion
noise

Physical Layer.18

Attenuation and amplification

Suppose a signal travels through a transmission medium and

its power is reduced to one half. This means that P2 = 0.5
P1. In this case, the attenuation (loss of power) can be
calculated as

A loss of 3 dB (3 dB) is equivalent to losing one-half the

power.

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Distortion

Different frequencies
propagate at different
speed through the
transmission medium

Noise

SNR Signal-to-Noise ratio

Two cases of SNR: a high SNR and a low SNR

Data Rate Limits

A
very
important
consideration
in
data
communications is how fast we can send data, in bits
per second, over a channel. Data rate depends on
three factors:
1. The bandwidth available (B)
2. The level of the signals we use (L)
3. The quality of the channel (the level of noise, SNR)

Physical Layer.24

Two theoretical formulas were developed to

calculate the data rate:
Noiseless channel: Nyquist Bit Rate

Noisy channel: Shannon capacity

Physical Layer .25

Noiseless Channel: Nyquist Bit Rate

1. The bandwidth available (B)
2. The level of the signals we use (L)
Bit Rate = 2 * B * Log2L

L=1, bit rate = 0

L=2, bit rate = 2B
L=4, bit rate = 4B
L=8, bit rate = 6B

..
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We need to send 265 kbps over a noiseless (ideal) channel

with a bandwidth of 20 kHz. How many signal levels do we
need? We can use the Nyquist formula as shown:

Since this result is not a power of 2, we need to either

increase the number of levels or reduce the bit rate. If we
have 128 levels, the bit rate is 280 kbps. If we have 64
levels, the bit rate is 240 kbps.

Theoretically, for a given bandwidth, we can have

any bit rate by increasing the number of signal
levels!

However, as the number of levels goes up, for a

given maximum signal amplitude, the spacing
between level decreases
Increasing the probability of an error occurring in
the presence of transmission impairments.

Physical Layer .28

Noisy Channel: Shannon Capacity

1. The bandwidth available (B)
3. The quality of the channel (the level of noise, SNR)
C = B * log2(1+SNR)

Intuitively, capacity increases with available bandwidth

(linear) and increases with SNR (log)

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Consider an extremely noisy channel in which the value of

the signal-to-noise ratio is almost zero. In other words, the
noise is so strong that the signal is faint. For this channel the
capacity C is calculated as shown below.

This means that the capacity of this channel is zero

regardless of the bandwidth. In other words, the data is so
corrupted in this channel that it is useless when received.

We can calculate the theoretical highest bit rate of a regular

telephone line with known SNR. A telephone line normally
has a bandwidth of 3000 Hz (300 to 3300 Hz) assigned for
data communications. The signal-to-noise ratio is usually
3162. For this channel the capacity is calculated as shown
below.

This means that the highest bit rate for a telephone line is
34.881 kbps. If we want to send data faster than this, we can
increase the bandwidth of the line (example?)
improve the signal-to noise ratio (example?)

Combining Both Formulae

We have a channel with a 1-MHz bandwidth. The SNR for
this channel is 63. What are the appropriate bit rate and
signal level?

DIGITAL TRANSMISSION

A computer network is designed to send

information from one point to another and
transmission can be either in digital or
analog form.
In digital transmission, signal is transmitted
in digital form.

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Digital-to-Digital Conversion
The conversion involves three techniques: line
coding, block coding, and scrambling.
We will only cover line coding, which is always
needed.

Line coding and decoding

Polar schemes (Part I: NRZ)

What can go wrong?

The main problem with NRZ encoding
occurs when the sender and receiver
clocks are not synchronized.
The receiver does not know when one bit
has ended and the next bit is starting

Polar schemes (Part II: RZ)

RZ transition in the middle of the bit

Mitigate issues with clock synchronization,
every bit incurs changes
Disadvantage requires two signal changes
per bit
Less efficient bandwidth usage

Polar schemes (Part III: Manchesters)

Combines RZ and NRZ-L

Has no DC component, and is self-clocking
Is widely used, e.g. Ethernet

Analog-to-Digital Conversion
If the signal is analog and the transmission is digital,
we need to convert the analog signals to digital
signals before transmission.
The tendency today is to change an analog signal to
digital data because the digital signal is less
susceptible to noise.

Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)

Sampling
Quantization
Encoding
Original Signal Recovery
PCM Bandwidth

Components of PCM encoder

Question: how often do we need to

sample the analog signal?

According to the Nyquist theorem, the

sampling rate must be at least 2 times the
highest frequency contained in the signal.

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Quantization and encoding of a sampled signal

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Example
We want to digitize the human voice. What is the bit rate,
assuming 8 bits per sample?
Solution
The human voice normally contains frequencies from 0 to
4000 Hz. So the sampling rate and bit rate are calculated as
follows.

Example
We want to digitize audio signals for human consumption
(e.g. music). What is the bit rate, assuming 10 bits per
sample?
Solution
The human hearing frequency ranges from 20Hz to 20kHz.
Sampling rate = 40kHz
Bit rate = 40 * 10 = 400 kbps

Audio CD uses 44.1kHz sampling rate, 16 bit samples, and

has 2 channels.
Bit rate = 44.1 * 16 * 2 = 1411.2 kbps

Baseband Transmission

A digital signal is a composite analog signal with

an infinite bandwidth
Sending a digital signal over a channel without
changing the digital signal to analog requires a
low pass channel with an infinite or very wide
bandwidth

Baseband Transmission

To preserve the shape of digital signal, low-pass

channel with an infinite or very wide bandwidth is
required.
Although the actual bandwidth of a digital signal is
infinite, the effective bandwidth is finite.

Transmission of Digital Signals

Broadband Transmission

If the available channel is a bandpass channel, we

cannot send the digital signal directly to the channel;
We need to convert the digital signal to an analog
signal before transmission.
Broadband transmission means changing the digital
signal to analog signal for transmission

Modulation of a digital signal for transmission

on a bandpass channel

ANALOG TRANSMISSION

Digital-to-analog conversion - changing one of the

characteristics of an analog signal based on the
information in digital data.

Modulation
Amplitude Shift Keying
Binary ASK (BASK)
Binary FSK (BFSK)

Phase Shift Keying

Binary PSK (BPSK)
Constellation Diagram

Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM)

7.51

Binary amplitude shift keying

(BASK)

Peak-to-peak voltage of the carrier is varied with data values.

Susceptible to impulse noise.

7.52

Binary frequency shift keying

(BFSK)

Frequency of the carrier is varied with data to be transmitted.

Amplitude and phase remain constant
Low speed dial up modems used FSK

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Binary phase shift keying (BPSK)

One signal element phase 00; another with phase 1800

Less susceptible to noise

Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM)

For example 4 phases and 2 amplitudes

1= 0 deg phase shift

1 = 90 deg phase shift
1 = 180 deg phase shift
1 = 270 deg phase shift
A1 = Low Amplitude
A2 = High Amplitude

Eg. 8-QAM

000
001
010
011
100
101
110
111

A1 1
A2 1
A1 2
A2 2
A1 3
A2 3
A1 4
A2 4

QAM is used in many technologies, including cable modems,

802.11, WiMAX and and HSPA.

Concept of a constellation diagram

A constellation
diagram illustrates the
amplitude and phase
of a signal element
A signal element type
is represented as a dot

7.56

Physical Layer .57

8 PSK
Physical Layer .58

16 QAM

So far, we have covered the following:

1.Digital data, digital transmission

Line encoding, baseband transmission
2.Analog data (convert to digital), digital transmission
Sampling, quantization
3.Digital data, analog transmission
Digital-to-analog conversion, modulation (e.g.
FSK, BPSK, QAM)
What is missing?
4. Analog data, analog transmission
Amplitude modulation (AM), Frequency
modulation (FM)
Physical Layer .59