Signal Encoding Techniques

Both analog and digital information can be encoded as either analog or

digital signals:
Digital data, digital signals: simplest form of digital encoding of digital
data
Digital data, analog signal: A modem converts digital data to an analog
signal so that it can be transmitted over an analog
Analog data, digital signals: Analog data, such as voice and video, are
often digitized to be able to use digital transmission facilities
Analog data, analog signals: Analog data are modulated by a carrier
frequency to produce an analog signal in a different frequency band, which
can be utilized on an analog transmission system
For digital signaling, a data source g(t), which may be either digital or analog,
is encoded into a digital signal x(t). The basis for analog signaling is a
continuous constant-frequency fc signal known as the carrier signal. Data
may be transmitted using a carrier signal by modulation, which is the
process of encoding source data onto the carrier signal. All modulation
techniques involve operation on one or more of the three fundamental
frequency domain parameters: amplitude, frequency, and phase.
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Digital Data, Digital Signal

Encoding - Digital data to digital signals: A digital signal is a sequence

of discrete, discontinuous voltage pulses. Each pulse is a signal element.
Binary data are transmitted by encoding each data bit into signal elements.
In the simplest case, there is a one-to-one correspondence between bits and
signal elements. More complex encoding schemes are used to improve
performance, by altering the spectrum of the signal and providing
synchronization capability.
Unipolar - All signal elements have the same sign
Polar - One logic state represented by positive voltage the other by
negative voltage
Data rate - Rate of data (R) transmission in bits per second
Duration or length of a bit - Time taken for transmitter to emit the bit (1/R)
Modulation rate -Rate at which the signal level changes, measured in baud
= signal elements per second.
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Interpreting Signals

The tasks involved in interpreting digital signals at the receiver can be

summarized as follows. First, the receiver must know the timing of each
bit, knowing with some accuracy when a bit begins and ends. Second, the
receiver must determine whether the signal level for each bit position is
high (0) or low (1).
Three factors are important: the signal-to-noise ratio, the data rate, and the
bandwidth. With other factors held constant, the following statements are
true:
An increase in data rate increases bit error rate (BER).
An increase in SNR decreases bit error rate.
An increase in bandwidth allows an increase in data rate.
Clocking - need for synchronizing transmitter and receiver either with an
external clock or with a sync mechanism based on signal
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Encoding
Schemes

They include:
Nonreturn to Zero-Level (NRZ-L)
Nonreturn to Zero Inverted (NRZI)
Bipolar -AMI
Pseudoternary
Manchester
Differential Manchester

B8ZS
HDB3

Nonreturn to Zero-Level(NRZ-L)

The most common, and easiest, way to transmit digital signals is to use two
different voltage levels for the two binary digits. Codes that follow this strategy
share the property that the voltage level is constant during a bit interval; there is
no transition (no return to a zero voltage level). A negative voltage represents
one binary value and a positive voltage represents the other. This is known as
Nonreturn to Zero-Level (NRZ-L).
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Nonreturn to Zero Inverted

Nonreturn to zero inverted on ones

A variation of NRZ is known as NRZI (Nonreturn to Zero, invert on ones).
As with NRZ-L, NRZI maintains a constant voltage pulse for the duration
of a bit time. The data bits are encoded as the presence or absence of a
signal transition at the beginning of the bit time. A transition (low to high
or high to low) at the beginning of a bit time denotes a binary 1 for that bit
time; no transition indicates a binary 0.
NRZI is an example of differential encoding. In differential encoding, the
information to be transmitted is represented in terms of the changes
between successive signal elements rather than the signal elements
themselves. The encoding of the current bit is determined as follows: if the
current bit is a binary 0, then the current bit is encoded with the same
signal as the preceding bit; if the current bit is a binary 1, then the current
bit is encoded with a different signal than the preceding bit.
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NRZ Pros & Cons

The main limitations of NRZ signals are the presence of a dc component and
the lack of synchronization capability.ie, any drift between the clocks of
transmitter and receiver will result in loss of synchronization between the two.
NRZ codes are commonly used for digital magnetic recording. However, their
limitations make these codes unattractive for signal transmission applications.

Multilevel Binary Bipolar-AMI

These codes use more than two signal levels.

In the bipolar-AMI scheme, a binary 0 is represented by no line signal, and a
binary 1 is represented by a positive or negative pulse. The binary 1 pulses
must alternate in polarity. There are several advantages to this approach. First,
there will be no loss of synchronization if a long string of 1s occurs. Each 1
introduces a transition, and the receiver can resynchronize on that transition. A
long string of 0s would still be a problem. Second, because the 1 signals
alternate in voltage from positive to negative, there is no net dc component.
Also, the bandwidth of the resulting signal is considerably less than the
bandwidth for NRZ. Finally, the pulse alternation property provides a simple
means of error detection. Any isolated error, whether it deletes a pulse or adds a
pulse, causes a violation of this property.
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Multilevel Binary Pseudoternary

The comments on bipolar-AMI also apply to pseudoternary. In this case,

it is the binary 1 that is represented by the absence of a line signal, and the
binary 0 by alternating positive and negative pulses.

Manchester Encoding

There is another set of coding techniques, grouped under the term biphase,
that overcomes the limitations of NRZ codes. Two of these techniques,
Manchester and differential Manchester, are in common use.
In the Manchester code, there is a transition at the middle of each bit
period. The midbit transition serves as a clocking mechanism and also as
data: a low-to-high transition represents a 1, and a high-to-low transition
represents a 0.

Differential Manchester Encoding

midbit transition is clocking only

transition at start of bit period representing 0

no transition at start of bit period representing 1

this is a differential encoding scheme

In differential Manchester, the midbit transition is used only to provide

clocking. The encoding of a 0 is represented by the presence of a transition
at the beginning of a bit period, and a 1 is represented by the absence of a
transition at the beginning of a bit period. Differential Manchester has the
added advantage of employing differential encoding.

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Digital Data, Analog Signal

main use is public telephone system

has freq range of 300Hz to 3400Hz
use modem (modulator-demodulator)
encoding techniques
Amplitude shift keying (ASK)
Frequency shift keying (FSK)
Phase shift keying (PK)
Thus digital devices are attached to the network via a modem (modulatordemodulator), which converts digital data to analog signals, and vice versa.
Have stated that modulation involves operation on one or more of the three
characteristics of a carrier signal: amplitude, frequency, and phase.
Accordingly, there are three basic encoding or modulation techniques for
transforming digital data into analog signals
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Modulation Techniques

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Amplitude Shift Keying

encode 0/1 by different carrier amplitudes

usually have one amplitude zero
susceptible to sudden gain changes
inefficient
used for
very high speeds over optical fiber

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Binary Frequency Shift Keying

most common is binary FSK (BFSK)

two binary values represented by two different frequencies (near carrier)
less susceptible to error than ASK
used for
high frequency radio
even higher frequency on LANs using co-ax

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Phase Shift Keying

phase of carrier signal is shifted to represent data

binary PSK
two phases represent two binary digits
differential PSK
phase shifted relative to previous transmission rather than some
reference signal
Two-level PSK is differential PSK (DPSK). In this scheme, a binary 0 is
represented by sending a signal burst of the same phase as the previous
signal burst sent. A binary 1 is represented by sending a signal burst of
opposite phase to the preceding one. This term differential refers to the
fact that the phase shift is with reference to the previous bit transmitted
rather than to some constant reference signal.

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Quadrature Amplitude Modulation

Quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) is a popular analog signaling

technique that is used in the asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL),
described in Chapter 8, and in some wireless standards. This modulation
technique is a combination of ASK and PSK. QAM can also be considered
a logical extension of QPSK. QAM takes advantage of the fact that it is
possible to send two different signals simultaneously on the same carrier
frequency, by using two copies of the carrier frequency, one shifted by 90
with respect to the other. For QAM, each carrier is ASK modulated. The
two independent signals are simultaneously transmitted over the same
medium. At the receiver, the two signals are demodulated and the results
combined to produce the original binary input.

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Analog Data, Digital Signal

A process of converting analog data into digital data; this process is known
as digitization.
The device used for converting analog data into digital form for
transmission, and subsequently recovering the original analog data from
the digital, is known as a codec (coder-decoder). In this section we
examine the two principal techniques used in codecs, pulse code
modulation and delta modulation.

Digitizing Analog Data

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Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)

sampling theorem:
If a signal is sampled at regular intervals at a rate higher than twice the
highest signal frequency, the samples contain all information in original
signal
eg. 4000Hz voice data, requires 8000 sample per sec
strictly have analog samples
Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM)
so assign each a digital value.
Thesimplesttechniquefortransforminganalogdataintodigitalsignalsis
pulsecodemodulation(PCM),whichinvolvessamplingtheanalogdata
periodicallyandquantizingthesamples.Pulsecodemodulation(PCM)is
basedonthesamplingtheorem.
Theseanalogsamplesarecalledpulseamplitudemodulation(PAM)
samples.Toconverttodigital,eachoftheseanalogsamplesmustbe
assignedabinarycode.
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PCM Block Diagram

Thus, PCM starts with a continuous-time, continuous-amplitude (analog) signal,

from which a digital signal is produced, as shown in Stallings DCC8e Figure
5.17. The digital signal consists of blocks of n bits, where each n-bit number is
the amplitude of a PCM pulse. On reception, the process is reversed to
reproduce the analog signal.By quantizing the PAM pulse, the original signal is
now only approximated and cannot be recovered exactly. This effect is known
as quantizing error or quantizing noise.
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Delta Modulation

A variety of techniques have been used to improve the performance of

PCM or to reduce its complexity. One of the most popular alternatives to
PCM is delta modulation (DM). With delta modulation, an analog input is
approximated by a staircase function that moves up or down by one
quantization level () at each sampling interval (Ts). The important
characteristic of this staircase function is that its behavior is binary: At
each sampling time, the function moves up or down a constant amount .
Thus, the output of the delta modulation process can be represented as a
single binary digit for each sample. In essence, a bit stream is produced by
approximating the derivative of an analog signal rather than its amplitude:
A 1 is generated if the staircase function is to go up during the next
interval; a 0 is generated otherwise.

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Delta Modulation Example

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Delta Modulation Operation

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It is a feedback mechanism.
For transmission, the following occurs: At each sampling time, the analog
input is compared to the most recent value of the approximating staircase
function. If the value of the sampled waveform exceeds that of the staircase
function, a 1 is generated; otherwise, a 0 is generated. Thus, the staircase is
always changed in the direction of the input signal. The output of the DM
process is therefore a binary sequence that can be used at the receiver to
reconstruct the staircase function. The staircase function can then be
smoothed by some type of integration process or by passing it through a
lowpass filter to produce an analog approximation of the analog input
signal.

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Analog Data, Analog Signals

Analog data can be modulated by a carrier frequency to produce an analog

signal in a different frequency band, which can be utilized on an analog
transmission system. The basic techniques are amplitude modulation (AM),
frequency modulation (FM), and phase modulation (PM).

Modulation has been defined as the process of combining an input signal

m(t) and a carrier at frequency fc to produce a signal s(t) whose bandwidth
is (usually) centered on fc. For digital data, the motivation for modulation
should be clear: When only analog transmission facilities are available,
modulation is required to convert the digital data to analog form.

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Analog
Modulation
Techniques
Amplitude
Modulation
Frequency
Modulation
Phase Modulation

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