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.
Physical Layer.5
Analog Signal (contd)
Signals has both time and frequency domain
representation.
First consider the simplest analog signal in time
domain: a Sine wave
Physical Layer.6
Physical Layer.8
Time-domain and Frequency-domain
plots of a sine wave
Combination of three sine waves
Another Example
Physical Layer .11
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.
Physical Layer .12
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.
Physical Layer .13
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
Physical Layer.14
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
Physical Layer.16
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.
Physical Layer.20
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
..
Physical Layer .26
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)
Physical Layer .29
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.
Physical Layer.33
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.
Physical Layer .42
Quantization and encoding of a sampled signal
Physical Layer.43
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
Physical Layer.53
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
