Experiment 6 Pulse Shaping, Bandwidth Constraints, Inter-Symbol Interference

(ISI) and Duobinary Symbols in Baseband Signaling.

INTRODUCTION
In Experiment 2, we saw how filtering can obliterate a signal. If a rectangular pulse, binary signal is
passed through a low pass filter with Fpass set too low, the symbols literally smear into one another.
The energy in any given bit time is affected by the bit or even several bits before it.
In practical applications, more than one signal may share a channel. As we shall see in bandpass
signaling, the bandwidth of the baseband signal is translated directly to the carrier frequency. The
bandwidth of the modulated bandpass signal is the same as the baseband signal. To maximize the
number of users in a shared band, it will be necessary to use frequency multiplexing with different users
on different carrier frequencies. The bandwidth of the transmitted signal will become critical as more
users demand access to the band. It is therefore important to find a minimum bandwidth symbol while
insuring against or accounting for inter-symbol interference (ISI). As we shall discover, this comes at a
cost.
The Sinc pulse offers a possible solution to this problem. Sinc pulses have sharply defined bandwidths,
in theory. To achieve this, the pulses would have to have infinite length, violating causality constraints.
A subset of the Sinc pulse is the raised cosine pulse, which has limited bandwidth, but is also of finite
length.
Finally, the experiment will explore combinations of Sinc pulses in duobinary signaling. Nyquists
theorem stated that it is possible to send 2B symbols per second in B Hertz bandwidth. For many years
it was thought that this could not be done without ISI and was impossible in practice. However, in 1963,
Lender developed duobinary signaling, which achieved the theoretical limit. We shall see that this
system of signaling introduces the principle of correlative coding and coding in general, where bits of
data are combined before being mapped to a particular symbol.

PRE-LAB
Matlab uses finite length FIR filters to generate Raised Cosine Pulses and Root Raised Cosines.
Determine the energy in a single Root Raised Cosine pulse that extends to the eighth zero crossing in
both directions from the center peak of amplitude 1, i.e. at -8T to +8T. Assume a sampling interval of
T/10. You may use a MATLAB model to make your determination empirically.
Using the results from above, calculate the average energy per bit for a bipolar, duobinary system where
the pulses defined above are weighted by the output of a digital filter, defined as: yn xn xn1 where
xn is the nth input to the filter. Consider a completely random input with all combinations of bits are
equally likely.

Design a three level duobinary decoder system that will have the following outputs for the given inputs:
Input

Output

-2

+2

Remember that this will have to decode a signal with noise, so set your thresholds accordingly. (Hint, a
zero and one are equally likely at the output.)

PROCEDURE
1. Use the results from Experiment 2 to review the spectrum of a bipolar rectangular pulse signal.
2. Design and implement a Simulink model which sends a single 1mS , bipolar rectangular pulse
through a low pass filter with Fpass = 500 and Fstop = 550, simulating a bandwidth limited
channel. Be sure to have at least 10 samples per pulse.
Use a matched digital filter, designed to receive the rectangular pulse and a downsampler to
sample the output of the matched filter. Adjust the offset of the downsampler to sample the
matched filter output at its peak point. (This value should be about 0 or 1 for the filter specified
above and 10 samples per pulse.)
Measure the intersymbol interference (ISI) by recording the values of the output of the
downsampler at the time of pulse and the samples either side of it. If there was no ISI, what
should the output of the downsampler be at these three points?
3. Using the Raised Cosine Transmit and Receive filters, repeat step 2. Set the Filter Type to
Normal, the Group Delay to 8 symbols and the Rolloff factor to zero on both filters. On the
Receive Filter, the Filter Gain should be set to User Specified and use a gain of .1. If you wish,
you may set the Output Mode to None and use the external Downsampler as you did earlier. Or
you may use the integral downsampler in the Receive Filter and apply all the downsampler
parameters as you would to the external downsampler. Measure the ISI as you did before,
noting the values of the output of the Downsampler for the samples before and after the main
pulse, and for the pulse itself.
4. Vary the Sample Offset of the Downsampler through a range of 0 to 4. How does this affect the
ISI?
5. Using the energy per pulse you calculated in the pre-lab, set up a transmitter and receiver using
the Square Root Raised Cosine pulse through an AWGN channel. On the receive filter, use User

Specified Gain set to 1. Test, record and plot the BER for 0 through 8 dB. Compare this on the
same plot with the theoretical BER for a bipolar signal.
Observe and record the average spectrum of the transmitted spectrum (before the AWGN).
How does it compare with the spectrum for the rectangular pulse (without the low pass filter)
from Experiment 2?
6. Using root raised cosine pulses, design a bipolar, duobinary signaling system (transmitter and
receiver with AWGN) with using a digital input filter whose output is expressed as

yn xn xn1 where xn is the nth input to the filter.

Measure the BER of the system for energy per bit to noise ratios of 0 through 11 dB in 1 dB
steps. Plot these on a log BER vs. Eb/No (dB) graph and plot the theoretical performance of a
binary signaling system on the same graph. How do they compare?
Observe and record the spectrum of the duobinary transmitter before the AWGN. How does
the spectrum compare with those of the binary, rectangular pulses from Experiment 2 and with
the spectrum from step 5?
7. Modify the duobinary system from step 6 to include precoding. Use this relationship for the
output of the precoder: wn xn wn 1 where w is the output of the precoder and x is the input.
Route the precoder output to the input of the digital filter in step 6. Use the three level
decoder from the pre lab to decode the signal. Note: Ensure that your output from the receive
filter is peaking at +/- 2.
Set the AWGN channel to Eb/No = 3dB and vary the thresholds that you determined in the pre
lab by at least +/- 20 per cent to verify that the thresholds are optimum. Graph the BER for this
system for all the trial thresholds with Eb/No fixed at 3dB. Adjust your thresholds to the
optimum values if necessary.
Record and plot the BER performance versus the Eb/No for this new system for Eb/No ranging
from 0 to 11 dB in 1 dB steps. Plot this performance on the same graph as the performance of
the system from step 6.
8. Obtain the exp6signal file from your instructor and use it as a source for the model from
step 7. Run the model and save the received bitstream to the Workspace. Decode the
bitstream using the same decoding script as before. The signal was recorded at 10 samples per
bit at 1000 samples per second. The message is plain text in ASCII 8 bit code. The Eb/No was 8dB
and there may be errors. Remember to run the model long enough to compensate for the
Group Delays (8 bits for the Transmit and Receive filters each). The first bit will be in error
because of the precoding. Adjust the decoding script to compensate for the Group Delays and
to ignore this bit. Include the decoded message in your lab report.

THOUGHTS FOR CONCLUSION

What was the cost for the narrow bandwidth of the duobinary signal?

What are the reasons for the BER performance being different for the duobinary signal?
Why can the Sinc pulse pass through a narrow bandwidth and be detected while a rectangular pulse at
the same rate cannot?
Explain the BER performance of the un-precoded, duobinary system from step 6. Why does the
precoded system from step 7 work better with the same Eb/No?
If the thresholds you calculated in the pre lab did not match those you ultimately used in step 7, explain
why.
As always, do not limit your conclusions to these topics.