2018

EEE 409:
Communication
Principles
Lecture Note
Communication Principles Assume That The Students Have Some
Basic Fundamental Knowledge Of Electrical & Electronic Circuit
Theory and Linear System Analysis. The Major Goal Of The Course
Is To Teach Students About Some Of The Basic Principles
Underlying The Analysis, Design And Operation Of Communication
Systems. The Course Is Structured To Provide Detailed Knowledge
of How Information Is Processed At The Transmitter, Transferred
Over A Noisy Channel And Retrieved At The Receiver With Minimal
Degradation. Thus, One of The Aims of Signal Analysis And
Processing Is To Receive A Replica Of The Transmitted Signal At
The Receiver. Different Types Of Signal Modulation and
Demodulation Techniques Are Discussed.

Electronic and Electrical Engineering Department F B

Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife
5/10/2018 O
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 `COMMUNICATION PRINCIPLES (3 UNITS)

COURSE OUTLINE

◊ Basic Concepts of a Communication system – Source, Channel and User

◊ Review of Baseband Signals and Systems Analysis: Fourier series, Fourier Transforms, Impulse response,
frequency response, distortion and group delay.

◊ Amplitude Modulation (AM) and Demodulation Methods

◊ Comparison of AM systems: Double Sideband Suppressed Carrier (DSBSC), Single Sideband (SSB),
Vestigial Sideband (VSB)

◊ Angle Modulation and Demodulation: Frequency Modulation (FM) and Phase Modulation

◊ Wideband and Narrow band FM: AM Detectors and FM Discriminators

◊ Sampling Principles, Theorem and Techniques

◊ Quantization

◊ Companding

◊ Pulse Modulation: Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM), Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) and Pulse Code
Modulation (PCM)

◊ DELTA modulation, Adaptive Delta modulation and differential PCM

◊ Data transmission and reception: Binary ASK, FSK and PSK

◊ M-ary FSK and PSK, QAM.

TEXTBOOK

◊ Communication Systems by S. Haykins

Further References and Recommended Readings:

○ Schaum’s outlines: Analog and digital communications by Hwei Hsu

○ Digital and Analog Communication Systems by Leon W. Couch

○ Contemporary Communication Systems using MATLAB by J. G. Proakis, M. Salehi and G. Bauch

USEFUL WEB RESOURCES

○ http://www.integral-calculator.com/
 COMMUNICATION PRINCIPLES

BASIC CONCEPTS OF A COMMUNICATION SYSTEM AND BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE

• What is Communication in Engineering?

Communication is the process of conveying or transferring or transmission of messages or information

from one point to another through a succession of certain processes.

• To give you basic understanding of a communication system, Figure 1 shows the typical elements of a
communication system.

Communication system

Source of User of
Information Message Transmitter Receiver Estimate Information
signal of message
signal

Transmitted Channel Received

signal signal

Figure 1: Elements of a Communication System

• Types of communication system

Communication systems can be classified based on the nature of output of the information source and
the types of modulation scheme utilised
• Basic modes of Communications include Telephony, Radio or Television Broadcasting, Radar, Mobile
Communication, Computer communication, etc.

• Sources of information: The message originates from the information source. Messages can be in the
form of words, code, symbols, sound signal etc. The function of the information source block is to
produce the required message to be transmitted.

▪ Voice, music, video, picture, computer data to mention a few.

• Transmitter: It comprises of blocks of electrical and electronic components that convert the message
signal into a form suitable for transmission over the communication channel. The conversion is achieved
by succession of processes that include modulation that will be studied in details in this course.

▪ Transmitted signal can be

◊ Analog

◊ Digital
 Thus, a signal is converted from analog to digital form by first discretizing the signal. This will
require the study of sampling theorem and techniques in this course.

• Channel:

Channel refers to the medium through which the information-bearing signal travels from the output of
the transmitter to the input of the receiver. The function of the channel is to provide connection
between the transmitter and the receiver. The channel can be

▪ Guided transmission channel e.g telephone lines, coaxial cables, fibre optics cables

▪ Free propagation channel e.g microwave link, radio wave links, free space optics,

• Noise/Interference

During the process of transmission and reception, the signal gets distorted due to noise in the system.
Noise

▪ is an unwanted signal which tends to interfere or degrade the information-bearing signal

▪ could be internal or external to the system but the noise that has greatest effect on the signal is
an external noise within the channel.

▪ could be additive or multiplicative or addition of both to the information-bearing signal

• Receiver

The function of a receiver is to retrieve the transmitted signal and then process the signal to obtain
estimates of the transmitted information.

• Primary Communication Resources

▪ Transmission power

▪ Channel bandwidth

• Features of a Communication System

▪ Nature of the information/signal and noise and primary communication resources

◊ The information/message is statistical in nature

◊ The noise and interference are naturally random in nature

◊ Each signal transmitted is characterized by power

◊ The power required by a signal is best understood by frequency characteristics or

bandwidth of the signal

◊ There is thus need for representation of the signal in the frequency domain

◊ Thus, communication principles deals with how to design a communication system

based on the knowledge of the statistics of the information and randomness of the
noise/interference
• Most communication channels and many sub-blocks of the transmitters and receivers can be well
modelled as linear time-invariant (LTI) systems. Therefore, the well-known tools and techniques from
linear system analysis can be employed in their analysis. Thus, Fourier series and Fourier transforms
used in the analysis of communications systems will be revised in this course with emphasis on
frequency-domain analysis tools because these are the most frequently used techniques in
communication systems.

▪ Fourier series is a particular type of orthogonal series that is very useful in solving engineering
problems, especially communication problems. The orthogonal functions that are used are
either sinusoids or, equivalently, complex exponential functions.

▪ Fourier transform can be described as the method used for finding the frequencies of
waveform of any type

▪ Frequency response is the quantitative measure of the output spectrum of a system in

response to an excitation, and is used to characterize the dynamics of the system. It can also be
described as a measure of magnitude and phase of the output as a function of frequency, in
comparison to the input

▪ Distortion means any change in a signal that alters the basic waveform or the relationship
between various frequency components and it usually leads to degradation of the signal.

▪ Group delay is the time delay of the amplitude envelopes of the various sinusoidal components
of a signal, and it is a function of frequency for each sinusoidal component.

• Another very important aspect of communication process is modulation of signal to be transmitted and
demodulation of the received signal. The design principles of a communication system deals with how
to efficiently use the available communication resources usually in a tradeoff manner.

Modulation is a process that causes a shift in the range of frequencies in a signal. Reasons for
employing modulation technique include:

▪ practical antenna length: in order to transmit a wave effectively, the length of the transmitting
antenna should be approximately equal to the wavelength of the wave;

▪ modulation helps in noise immunity and attenuation (depending on the physical transmission
medium);

▪ multiplexing: several modulated signal can be combined for their simultaneous or concurrent
transmission over the channel. The signals that occupy the same range of frequencies can be
separated at the receiver.
 Source of Message signal Estimate of message signal User of
Information Information

… Receiver
…
Transmitter Receiver

Modulator Demodulator
Transmitter

Waveform
Received signal
Channel

Communication System

Modulation

Continuous-wave modulation Pulse modulation

Amplitude Angle Analog pulse Digital pulse

modulation modulation modulation modulation

SSB VSB Frequency Phase PAM PWM PPM PCM DPCM

DSB-SC
modulation modulation

• Types of Modulation: Analog Modulation and digital modulation schemes

▪ Continuous-wave (CW) modulation: A sinusoidal wave is used as the carrier. A parameter of the
sinusoidal carrier wave is varied continuously in accordance with the message signal. Parameters
that can be varied include:

◊ Amplitude [amplitude modulation (AM)]

◊ Frequency [frequency modulation (FM)]
◊ Phase [phase modulation]

▪ AM Systems

◊ Double Side Band - Suppressed Carrier (DSB-SC) Modulation: In AM modulation, transmission

of carrier consumes lot of power. Since, only the side bands contain the information about the
message, carrier is suppressed. This results in a DSB-SC wave.

◊ Single Side Band (SSB) Modulation: In DSB-SC it is observed that there is symmetry in the side
band structure. So, even if one half is transmitted, the other half can be recovered at the
receiver. By doing so, the bandwidth and power of transmission is reduced by half. Depending
on which half of DSB-SC signal is transmitted, there are two types of SSB modulation

- Lower Side Band (LSB) Modulation

- Upper Side Band (USB) Modulation

 ◊ Vestigial Side Band (VSB) Modulation

The SSB signal generation has some drawbacks:

- generation of a SSB signal is difficult.

- selective filtering is to be done to get the original signal back.

- phase shifter should be exactly tuned to 90O.

To overcome these drawbacks, VSB modulation is used. VSB can viewed as a compromise
between SSB and DSB-SC. Thus, in VSB

- one of the sidebands is not rejected fully.

- one sideband is transmitted fully and a small part (vestige) of the other sideband is
transmitted alongside.

▪ Pulse modulation: The carrier consist of a sequence of periodic rectangular pulses. The following parameters
of the pulse are modified in accordance with the message signal:

- pulse amplitude [pulse amplitude modulation (PAM)]

- pulse width/duration [pulse width modulation (PWM)]
- pulse position [pulse position modulation (PPM)]

▪ Digital Pulse Modulation: In digital pulse modulation, message signal is represented in a form that is discrete
in both amplitude and time.

Pulse code modulation (PCM)

o The signal is transmitted as a sequence of coded pulses

o No continuous wave in this form of transmission
o It originates from PAM but with certain modification
o The sampled pulses are converted into bits
o The bits of the input PCM signal are gated to the output port in parallel
o The gate can now be designed using truth table which facilitates system integration or
multiplexing