Digital Communications

Lecture # 1
Course Introduction

Sidra Shaheen Syed

Sidra.shaheen@iqraisb.edu.pk
Course Information
• Lecture Timing
• Monday  08:00 AM  LR # 5
• Wednesday 8:00 AM  LR#5

•Office Hours
• Monday  11:30 AM to 1:00PM
• Wednesday  11:30AM to 1:00PM

•Text Books
• Digital Communications , 4th edition, J.G. Proakis McGraw Hill, 2000
• Digital Communications: Fundamentals & Applications, 2nd Ed., 2001 by B. Sklar
• Modern Digital and Analogue Communication, 4th Ed., by B.P. Lathi and Zhi Ding

•Marks Distribution
Theory: 100%
Quizzes: 10
Assignments: 10
Mids: 25
Project:5
Final 50

•For Lecture notes and other class material, join class Facebook group
•Digital Communications(EEN-321)Fall16
Class Rules
•Class attendance and on-time arrival at the start of class is expected.

•Absences will be duly noted and may result in a decrease in individual performance
assessment (i.e. your grade). You are responsible for obtaining the missed lecture notes
from your fellow students. I will not provide them.

•Talking between students during the lecture is frowned upon =: (

•Cell phone, texting, twittering, and other PDA use during class is strictly forbidden.

•Please do ask questions during class about the lecture. They

may help to clarify the topic not only for you, but for others in
the class as well.

• Late and plagiarized assignments will not considered

•Please do not ask me to “friend you” on Facebook.

Acknowledgements & Credits
• I gratefully acknowledge Dr. Bikash Kumar Dey because most
often I will be teaching the lectures/slides/notes from him.

•Throughout the course, I will borrow examples and

explanations from the following book:

1. Digital Communications, John Proakis, McGraw Hill, 4h Edition, 2000.

2. Digital Communications: Fundamentals & Application, 2nd Ed., 2001 by
B.Sklar
3. Modern Digital and Analogue Communications, 4th Edition by B.P. Lathi
and Zhi Ding
Know Your Instructor

2015
MS Electrical
Engineering (Telecom
& Computer
Networks)
2011
BE Electrical
(Telecommunication )

COMSATS SEECS, NUST

Introduce yourself

•Name

• CGPA

• Area of interest
Topical Overview

• Purpose of Communication System

• Analogue and Digital Source

• Channels

• Noise

• Introduction to Digital Communication Systems

• Power Spectral Density

Purpose of Communication

• Main purpose of communication is to transfer information from a

source to a recipient via a channel or medium.

• Basic block diagram of a communication system:

Source Transmitter Channel Receiver

Recipient
Brief Description
• Source:
• Analog e.g. audio and video signals
• Digital e.g. binary sequence and text in a form of ASCII

• Transmitter: transducer, amplifier, modulator, oscillator, power

amp., antenna

• Channel: e.g. cable, optical fibre, free space

• Receiver: antenna, demodulator, oscillator, power amplifier,

transducer

• Recipient: e.g. person, (loud) speaker, computer

•Types of information

•Voice, data, video, music, email etc.

•Types of communication systems

• Public Switched Telephone Network ( voice, fax, modem)

• Satellite systems
•Radio, TV broadcasting
•Cellular phones
•Computer networks (LANs, WANs, WLANs)
Information Representation
• Communication system converts information into electrical
electromagnetic/optical signals appropriate for the transmission
medium.
• Analog systems convert analog message into signals that can
propagate through the channel.

•Digital systems convert bits(digits, symbols) into signals

• Computers naturally generate information as characters/bits

• Most information can be converted into bits
• Analog signals converted to bits by sampling and quantizing (A/D
conversion)
Analogue to Digital

• Analogue signal can be converted into binary /digital form

by A/D converter , which involves

• Sampling
• Quantization
Channels

• Examples: Wireline , fibre optic, space, storage channel,

under water acoustic channel

•Randomness in Channels : If deterministic the problem

reduces to designing the inverse system. But, the channels

have random noise

Noise
• Channel Noise
•Distortion

• Multipath

• Interference

• Receiver’s Noise

• Thermal noise

• Man made noise e.g. Switching noise

• Natural noise e.g. lightening,

AWGN Channel Model
•Most common thermal noise is Gaussian noise

Transmitted
Signal Received
Deterministic
Signal
function

Gaussian
Noise

More channel models in the course

Early Digital Comm. Systems

•Telegraphy: Morse Code

•“A-Z”, “0-9”, “.”, “,”, “?” were represented by sequence of

dots, dashes, and space

• Was used for manual transmission by sounders, and

reception by receiving operators
Morse Code
• Frequent Characters  Short Sequences

• Rare Characters  long sequences

Purpose: To minimize the average length of the code strings

Basic Digital Communication System
Digital Communication System
The Analogue Source
Analogue Vs Digital Comm.
• Most early systems were analogue

• Television
• AM & FM Radio
• Telephone

• All new systems are digital

• Cellular mobile phones
• Internet
• LAN
Why Digital?
• Cheaper, easy to design digital electronics

• Digital techniques need to distinguish between discrete symbols

allowing regeneration versus amplification

• Good processing techniques are available for digital signals, such as

• Data compression (or source coding)
• Error Correction (or channel coding)(A/D conversion)
• Equalization
• Security

• Easy to mix signals and data using digital techniques

• Can achieve near capacity rates

Resource Constraints
• Spectrum

• Wireless, wireline, fiber spectrum is limited due to

• Channel frequency response

• Sharing by different users and applications

• Transmit power

• Battery power
• Interference
Crucial Channel Parameter

Noise Variance
under normalized channel gain
Power Spectral Density
• Power spectrum ( Power spectral density) describes
how average power is distributed with respect to
frequency

• Deterministic signals  Fourier transform

• Random signals  Power spectral density (PSD)

•For random signals bandwidth is also determined from PSD