Chapter-4

Digital Transmission
Prepared by-
Shyla Afroge & S. M. Mahedy Hasan
Assistant Professor, Dept. of CSE
RUET, Rajshahi-6204, Bangladesh
 Digital Transmission
Digital transmission mainly two types:
1. Digital data to Digital signal
2. Analog signal to Digital data

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 2

 Data Element vs Signal Element
✔ Data elements are what we need to send; signal elements are what we can send. Data elements are being carried;
signal elements are the carriers.

✔ Ratio, r = Data element/Signal element

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 3

 Data Rate vs Signal Rate
❑ Data Rate

✔ The data rate defines the number of data elements (bits) sent in 1s. The unit is bits per second (bps).

✔ The data rate is sometimes called the bit rate.

❑ Signal Rate

✔ The signal rate is the number of signal elements sent in 1s. The unit is the baud.

✔ The signal rate is sometimes called the pulse rate, the modulation rate, or the baud rate.

❑ Goal of Data Communication

✔ Increase the data rate while decreasing the signal rate.

✔ Increasing the data rate increases the speed of transmission.

✔ Decreasing the signal rate decreases the bandwidth requirement.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 4

 Data Rate vs Signal Rate
✔ Relationship between data rate and signal rate:
S = c * N * 1/r baud

Where N is the data rate (bps); c is the case factor, which varies for each case; S is the number of
signal elements; and r is the previously defined factor. Here, c=1 worst case, c=0 best case and c=1/2
average case.

Example: A signal is carrying data in which one data element is encoded as one signal element ( r =
1). If the bit rate is 100 kbps, what is the average value of the baud rate if c is between 0 and 1?
Solution: We assume that the average value of c is 1/2 . The baud rate is then

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 5

Basic Terminologies for Line Coding Scheme
❑ Baseline Wandering

✔ In decoding a digital signal, the receiver calculates a running average of the received signal power
(voltage or amplitude).

✔ This average is called the baseline.

✔ The incoming signal power is evaluated against this baseline to determine the value of the data
element.

✔ A long string of 0’s or 1’s can cause a drift in the baseline (baseline wandering) and make it
difficult for the receiver to decode correctly.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 6

Basic Terminologies for Line Coding Scheme
❑ DC Components Problem

✔ When the voltage level in a digital signal is constant for a while, the spectrum creates very low frequencies.

✔ These frequencies around zero, called DC (direct-current) components.

✔ For example, a telephone line cannot pass frequencies below 200 Hz.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 7

Basic Terminologies for Line Coding Scheme
❑ Self Synchronization

✔ To correctly interpret the signals received from the sender, the receiver's bit intervals must correspond exactly
to the sender's bit intervals.

✔ If the receiver clock is faster or slower, the bit intervals are not matched and the receiver might misinterpret
the signals.

✔ A self-synchronizing digital signal includes timing information in the data being transmitted.

✔ This can be achieved if there are transitions in the signal that alert the receiver to the beginning, middle, or
end of the pulse.

✔ Notes: If receiver faster than sender than extra bit will be added to the receiver. If receiver is slower
than the sender than the receiver might loss some bits.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 8

Basic Terminologies for Line Coding Scheme
❑ Self Synchronization

Figure: Effect of lack of synchronization

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 9
Basic Terminologies for Line Coding Scheme
❑ Self Synchronization

✔ Example: In a digital transmission, the receiver clock is 0.1 percent faster than the sender clock. How many
extra bits per second does the receiver receive if the data rate is 1 kbps? How many if the data rate is 1
Mbps?

Solution:

100 …………… 0.1 extra bit

1………………. (0.1/100) extra bit

1000…………….(0.1/100) * 1000 = 1 extra bit

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 10

Basic Terminologies for Line Coding Scheme
❑ Built-in Error Detection:- It is desirable to have a built-in error-detecting capability in the generated code to
detect some of or all the errors that occurred during transmission.

❑ Immunity to Noise and Interference:- Another desirable code characteristic is a code that is immune to
noise and other interferences.

❑ Complexity:- A complex scheme is more costly to implement than a simple one. For example, a scheme that
uses four signal levels is more difficult to interpret than one that uses only two levels.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 11

Digital to Digital Conversion
✔ Digital to digital conversion is used to represent digital data in digital signal.

✔ The conversion involves three techniques: line coding, block coding, and scrambling.

❑ Line Coding

✔ Line coding is the process of converting digital data to digital signals.

✔ Line coding converts a sequence of bits to a digital signal.

✔ At the sender, digital data are encoded into a digital signal.

✔ At the receiver, the digital data are recreated by decoding the digital signal.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 12

Line Coding
Line coding is divided into five categories:-

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 13

Line Coding
❑ Unipolar (Not-Return-to-Zero)

✔ Positive voltage defines bit 1 and the zero voltage defines bit 0.

✔ It is called NRZ because the signal does not return to zero at the middle of the bit.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 14

Line Coding
❑ Advantages of Unipolar (Not-Return-to-Zero)

✔ Very simple.

✔ Occupies lesser bandwidth.

❑ Disadvantages of Unipolar NRZ

✔ It has DC component problem for 1’s.

✔ It suffers from baseline wandering problem for 1’s.

✔ No error correction done.

✔ No self synchronization.

✔ Greater normalized power.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 15

Line Coding
❑ Polar (NRZ-L)

✔ The level of voltage determines the values of bit.

✔ Bit 1 Negative Voltage, Bit 0 Positive Voltage.
✔ The voltages are on both sides of the time axis.
❑ Polar (NRZ-I)

✔ Change or lack of change in the level of voltage determines the values of bit.

✔ Bit 1 Change, Bit 0 No Change.

✔ Let us assume the last voltage level was positive.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 16

Line Coding
•

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 17

Line Coding
❑ Disadvantages of Polar (NRZ-L & NRZ-I):
✔ Baseline wandering problems for long 0’s and long 1’s (NRZ-L).
✔ Baseline wandering problems for long sequence of 0’s (NRZ-I).

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 18

Line Coding
❑ Disadvantages of Polar (NRZ-L & NRZ-I):
✔ Synchronization problem also exists in both NRZ-L and NRZ-I and like before the problem is more severe in NRZ-L.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 19

Line Coding
❑ Disadvantages of Polar (NRZ-L & NRZ-I):
✔ Change of polarity in the system changes the interpretation of data in NRZ-L not in NRZ-I.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 20

Line Coding
❑ Disadvantages of Polar (NRZ-L & NRZ-I):
✔ DC component problems for 0’s and 1’s (NRZ-L).
✔ DC component problems for 0’s (NRZ-I).

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 21

Line Coding

Due to lack of synchronization in NRZ scheme, the receiver does not know when one bit has ended and
next bit is starting.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 22

Line Coding

Polar return to zero scheme solves the problem by marking the middle of the by a
transition to zero.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 23

Line Coding
❑ Polar (Return-to-Zero)
✔ It uses three voltage levels +V, 0 and –V.
✔ Negative voltage represents ‘0’ and positive voltage represents ‘1’.
✔ Always goes to zero at the middle of the bit and stays there until the start of the next bit.
❑ Advantages
✔ There is no DC component problem.
✔ Synchronization is possible.
❑ Disadvantages
✔ It uses three level of voltage and complex.
✔ Signal rate is high.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 24

Line Coding
❑ Polar Bi-phase (Manchester and Differential Manchester)

✔ Manchester coding consists of combining the NRZ-L and RZ schemes.

✔ Differential Manchester coding consists of combining the NRZ-I and RZ schemes.

✔ Let us assume last voltage level was positive.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 25

Line Coding
❑ Advantages

✔ There is no DC component problem.

✔ Synchronization is possible.

✔ There is no baseline wandering problem.

❑ Disadvantages

✔ Signal rate is high.

Note

In Manchester and differential Manchester encoding, the transition

at the middle of the bit is used for synchronization.
2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 26
Line Coding
❑ In bipolar encoding (multilevel binary), there are three voltage levels: positive, negative, and zero.

❑ The voltage level for one data element is at zero, while the voltage level for the other element alternates between positive and negative.

❑ It has two types:

1. Alternative Mark Inversion (AMI): For AMI, bit 1 alternate between +V and –V and bit 0 Zero Voltage. Let’s assume last non-zero
pulse was negative.

2. Pseudo-ternary: For AMI, bit 0 alternate between +V and –V and bit 1 Zero Voltage. Let’s assume last zero pulse was negative.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 27

Line Coding
❑ Advantages

✔ No baseline wandering

✔ No dc component problem

❑ Disadvantages

✔ Synchronization problem

❑ Uses: It is commonly used for long-distance communication.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 28

Line Coding
•

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 29

Line Coding
❑ Multilevel Schemes

❑ 2B1Q

✔ In this type of encoding m =2, n =1, and L =4 (quaternary).

❑ Disadvantages:

✔ No self synchronization.

✔ No error detection.

✔ It has dc component problem.

❑ Uses:

✔ 2BIQ is used in DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) technology to provide a high-speed connection to the
Internet by using subscriber telephone lines.
2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 30
Line Coding
❑ 2B1Q

Previous Level Positive.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 31

Line Coding
❑ 8B6T

✔ Here, 8 bits are used as a pattern of 6 signal elements, where the signal has three levels (ternary). In this
type of scheme, we can have 2^8 =256 different data patterns and 3^6 =729 different signal patterns.

✔ There are 729 - 256 =473 redundant signal elements that provide synchronization and error detection.

✔ Part of the redundancy is also used to provide DC balance.

✔ Each signal pattern has a weight of 0 or +1 DC values.

✔ To make the whole stream Dc-balanced, the sender keeps track of the weight.

✔ If two groups of weight 1 are encountered one after another, the first one is sent as is, while the next one
is totally inverted to give a weight of -1.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 32

Line Coding
•

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 33

Line Coding
❑ Advantages of 8B6T

✔ No dc component problem.

✔ Synchronization is available.

✔ Error detection available.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 34

Line Coding
❑ Multiline Transmission (MLT-3)

✔ The multiline transmission, three level (MLT-3) scheme uses three levels (+v, 0, and - V) and three transition
rules to move between the levels.
1. If the next bit is 0, there is no transition.
2. If the next bit is 1 and the current level is not 0, the next level is 0.
3. If the next bit is 1 and the current level is 0, the next level is the opposite of the last nonzero level.

✔ Assume that, last level was at 0 voltage and last non-zero pulse was negative.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 35

Line Coding
❑ Multiline Transmission (MLT-3)

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 36

Block Coding
✔ Block coding is applied before line coding.

✔ It provides redundancy and improves the performance of line coding.

✔ In general, block coding replaces a block of m bits with block of n bits, where n is larger than m. Block coding
is referred to as an mB/nB encoding technique.

✔ It works in three steps: 1. Division 2. Substitution 3. Combination

✔ In the division step, a sequence of bits is divided into groups of m bits.

✔ In the substitution step, it substitutes an m-bit group for an n-bit group.

✔ Finally, the n-bit groups are combined together to form a stream.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 37

Block Coding

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 38

Block Coding
❑ 4B/5B

✔ The four binary/five binary (4B/5B) coding scheme was designed to be used in combination with NRZ-I and
solve the synchronization problem of NRZ-I.

✔ It replaces each block of 4 bits with a block of 5 bits has no more than one leading zero (left bit) and no more
than two trailing zeros (right bits).

✔ A group of 4 bits can have only 16 different combinations while a group of 5 bits can have 32 different
combinations.

✔ This means that there are 16 groups that are not used for 4B/5B encoding.

✔ Some of these unused groups are used for control purposes; the others are not used at all.

✔ The latter provide a kind of error detection. If a 5-bit group arrives that belongs to the unused portion of the
table, the receiver knows that there is an error in the transmission.
2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 39
Block Coding
❑ 4B/5B

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 40

Block Coding
❑ 4B/5B Mapping Table

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 41

Block Coding
❑ 4B/5B Example

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 42

Block Coding
❑ 4B/5B

❑ Disadvantages

✔ It can’t solve the dc component problem of NRZ-I.

✔ It increases the signal rate of NRZ-I.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 43

Block Coding
❑ 8B/10B

✔ A group of 8 bits of data is now substituted by a l0-bit code.

✔ It provides greater error detection capability than 4B/5B. The 8B/10B block coding is actually a combination of 5B/6B and
3B/4B encoding.

✔ The most five significant bits of a 10-bit block is fed into the 5B/6B encoder; the least 3 significant bits is fed
into a 3B/4B encoder.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 44

Block Coding
❑ 8B/10B

✔ To prevent a long run of consecutive 0’s or 1’s, the code uses a disparity controller which keeps track of
excess 0’s over 1’s (or 1’s over 0’s).

✔ If the bits in the current block create a disparity that contributes to the previous disparity then each bit in the
code is complemented.

✔ The coding has 2^10 – 2^8 = 768 redundant groups that can be used for disparity checking and error detection.

✔ In general, the technique is superior to 4B/5B because of better built-in error-checking capability and better
synchronization.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 45

Block Coding
❑ Scrambling

✔ Provide synchronization without increasing the number of bits.

✔ Part of AMI rule is modified to include scrambling.

✔ It is done as same time as line coding.

✔ Two common scrambling techniques are B8ZS and HDB3.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 46

Block Coding
❑ Scrambling(B8ZS)

✔ It is known as Bipolar with 8 zero substitution.

✔ 8 consecutive zeros are substituted by 000VB0VB.

✔ V (violation)- same as last non-zero level

✔ B(Bipolar)- opposite to last non-zero level

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 47

Block Coding

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 48

Block Coding
❑ Scrambling(B8ZS)

✔ V (violation)- same as last non-zero level

✔ B(Bipolar)- opposite to last non-zero level

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 49

Block Coding
❑ Scrambling (HDB3): High Density Bipolar 3 Zero

✔ Four consecutive zero-level voltages are replaced with a sequence of 000V or B00V.

✔ The two rules can be stated as follows:

1. If the number of nonzero pulses after the last substitution is odd, the substitution pattern will be 000V, which makes the total number of
nonzero pulses even.
2. If the number of nonzero pulses after the last substitution is even, the substitution pattern will be B00V, which makes the total number
of nonzero pulses even.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 50

Block Coding
❑ Scrambling (HDB3): High Density Bipolar 3 Zero

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 51

Block Coding
❑ Scrambling (HDB3): High Density Bipolar 3 Zero

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 52

Analog to Digital Signal

Digital Data
01010101100
Digitization Line Coding

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 53

Analog to Digital Signal

Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)

Delta Modulation (DM)

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 54

Analog to Digital Signal
❑ Pulse Code Modulation (PCM):-
✔ It has three steps.

Sampling

Quantizing

Encoding

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 55

Analog to Digital Signal
❑ Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 56

Analog to Digital Signal
❑ Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)

✔ Sampling

Sampling Interval

This process is also referred as Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM)

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 57
Analog to Digital Signal
❑ Types of Sampling
✔ Natural Sampling: An impulse at each sampling instant.

✔ Ideal Sampling: A pulse of short width with varying amplitude.

✔ Flat-Top Sampling: Pulse of short width at same amplitude value.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 58

Analog to Digital Signal

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 59

Analog to Digital Signal
❑ Nyquist Sampling Theorem

✔ The sampling rate must be at least 2 times the highest frequency contained in the signal.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 60

Analog to Digital Signal
❑ Nyquist Sampling Theorem

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 61

Analog to Digital Signal
❑ Nyquist Sampling Theorem

Example: A complex low-pass signal has a bandwidth of 200 kHz. What is the minimum sampling rate for
this signal?
Solution: The bandwidth of a low-pass signal is between 0 and f, where f is the maximum frequency in the
signal. Therefore, we can sample this signal at 2 times the highest frequency (200 kHz). The sampling rate is
therefore 400,000 samples per second.

Example: A complex bandpass signal has a bandwidth of 200 kHz. What is the minimum sampling rate for this signal?

Solution: We cannot find the minimum sampling rate in this case because we do not know where the

bandwidth starts or ends. We do not know the maximum frequency in the signal.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 62

Analog to Digital Signal
❑ Sampling

Multiply

Sampler

Message Signal Sampled Signal

Impulse Signal

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 63

Analog to Digital Signal
❑ Quantization

Sampling Quantizing
Time Discrete
Amplitude Discrete

Sampled Signal
Message Signal

Time Continuous Time Discrete

Amplitude Continuous Amplitude Continuous

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 64

Analog to Digital Signal
❑ Quantization
✔ Sampling results in a series of pulses of varying amplitude values ranging between two limits: maximum
amplitude and minimum amplitude.

✔ The amplitude values are infinite between these two limits.

✔ Quantization process maps these infinite amplitude values onto a finite set of known values.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 65

Analog to Digital Signal
•

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 66

Analog to Digital Signal
❑ Quantization

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 67

Analog to Digital Signal
•

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 68

Analog to Digital Signal
❑ Quantization Levels
The quantization level mainly depends on-

The ranges of amplitudes of the analog signal

How accurately we need to recover the signal

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 69

Analog to Digital Signal
❑ Transmission Bandwidth

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 70

Analog to Digital Signal
•

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 71

Analog to Digital Signal
❑ Delta Modulation (DM)
✔ It builds a second signal that resembles as staircase signal.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 72

Analog to Digital Signal

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 73

Analog to Digital Signal

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 74

Transmission Modes (Digital Transmission)

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 75

Transmission Modes (Digital Transmission)
❑ Parallel Transmission
✔ Use n wires to send n bits at one time.
❑ Advantages
✔ Speed is high, all else being equal, parallel transmission can increase the transfer speed by a factor of n over serial
transmission.
❑ Disadvantages
✔ Parallel transmission requires n communication lines. Because this is expensive, parallel transmission is usually limited to
short distances.
✔

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 76

Transmission Modes (Digital Transmission)
❑ Serial Transmission
✔ In serial transmission one bit follows another, so we need only one communication channel rather than n to transmit data
between two communicating devices.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 77

Transmission Modes (Digital Transmission)
❑ Advantages of Serial Transmission

✔ The advantage of serial over parallel transmission is that with only one communication channel, serial transmission

reduces the cost of transmission over parallel by roughly a factor of n.

❑ Disadvantages of Serial Transmission

✔ Speed comparatively slower than parallel transmission.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 78

Transmission Modes (Digital Transmission)
❑ Asynchronous Transmission
✔ The timing of a signal is unimportant.
✔ Instead, information is received and translated by agreed upon patterns. As long as those patterns are followed, the receiving device can
retrieve the information without regard to the rhythm in which it is sent.
✔ In asynchronous transmission, we send 1 start bit (0) at the beginning and 1 or more stop bits (Is) at the end of each byte. There may be a
gap between each byte.
✔ The start and stop bits and the gap alert the receiver to the beginning and end of each byte and allow it to synchronize with the data
stream.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 79

Transmission Modes (Digital Transmission)
❑ Asynchronous Transmission
❑ Advantages
✔ But it is cheap and effective, two advantages that make it an attractive choice for situations such as low-speed
communication.
❑ Uses
✔ For example, the connection of a keyboard to a computer is a natural application for asynchronous transmission.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 80

Transmission Modes (Digital Transmission)
❑ Synchronous Transmission
✔ In synchronous transmission, we send bits one after another without start or stop bits or gaps. It is the responsibility of the receiver to
group the bits.
✔ Timing becomes very important, therefore, because the accuracy of the received information is completely dependent on the ability of
the receiving device.
✔ The advantage of synchronous transmission is speed. With no extra bits or gaps to introduce at the sending end and remove at the
receiving end, and, by extension, with fewer bits to move across the link, synchronous transmission is faster than asynchronous
transmission.
✔ For this reason, it is more useful for high-speed applications such as the transmission of data from one computer to another. Byte
synchronization is accomplished in the data link layer.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 81

Transmission Modes (Digital Transmission)
❑ Isochronous Transmission
✔ In real-time audio and video, in which uneven delays between frames are not acceptable, synchronous transmission fails.

✔ For example, TV images are broadcast at the rate of 30 images per second; they must be viewed at the same rate.

✔ If each image is sent by using one or more frames, there should be no delays between frames.

✔ For this type of application, synchronization between characters is not enough; the entire stream of bits must be

synchronized. The isochronous transmission guarantees that the data arrive at a fixed rate.

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 82

 Thank You ☺

2/24/2023 Digital Transmission 83