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Introduction to Digital
Communications and
Information Theory
Introduction to Digital
Communications
Preamble
Usage of the benefits of electrical communications in general and digital
communications in particular, is an inseparable part of our daily experience now.
Innumerable applications due to developments in digital communications have already
started influencing our day-to-day activities directly or indirectly. Popularity of the
Internet and television are only two of the most obvious examples to prove the point. In
fact, it may not be an overstatement today that ‘information highways’ are considered as
essential ingredients of national infrastructure in the march of a modern society. It is,
however, pertinent to mention that isolated developments only in the field of electrical
communications have not caused this phenomenon. Remarkable progresses and technical
achievements in several related fields in electronics engineering and computer
engineering have actually made applications of several principles and theories of
communication engineering feasible for implementation and usage. The purpose of this
web course, however, is narrow and specific to the principles of digital communications.
The first module consists of four lessons. The present lesson (Lesson #1) gives an
outline of major historical developments in the field of research in telecommunications
engineering over a period of hundred years. Materials on radio spectrum should help
recapitulate a few basic issues. The lesson ends with a general schematic description on a
digital communication system. Lesson #2 gives a brief classification of signals and
emphasizes the importance of sampling theory. Lesson #3 presents some basic concepts
of information theory, which helps in appreciating other central principles and techniques
of digital transmission. The concept of ‘information’ is also outlined here. Needs and
benefits of modeling an information source are the topics in Lesson #4.
The second module is devoted to Random Processes. The module starts with a
simple to follow introduction to random variables (Lesson #5). It is often necessary to
acquire the skill of defining appropriate functions of one or more random variables and
their manipulation to have greater insight into parameters of interest. The topic is
introduced in Lesson #6 wherein only functions of one random variable have been
considered. A powerful and appropriate modeling of a digital communication system is
often possible by resorting to the rich theories of stochastic processes and this remains an
important tool for deeper analysis of any transmission system in general. The topic has
been treated at an elementary level in Lesson #7. A few commonly encountered random
distributions, such as binomial, Poisson, Gaussian and Rayleigh are presented in Lesson
#6. An emerging and powerful branch in electrical communication engineering is now
popularly known as statistical signal processing and it encompasses several interesting
issues of communication engineering including those of signal detection and parameter
estimation. The basic backgrounds, laid in Lessons #5 to #8 should be useful in
appreciating some of the generic issues of signal detection and parameter estimation as
outlined in Lesson #9.
The third module on pulse coding focuses on the specific tasks of quantization
and coding as are necessary for transmission and reception of an analog electrical signal.
It is however, assumed that the reader is familiar with the basic schemes of analog-to-
digital conversion. The emphasis in this module is more on the effects of quantization
error (Lesson #10) while different pulse coding schemes such as Pulse Code Modulation
(Lesson #11), Log-PCM (Lesson #12), Differential Pulse Code Modulation (Lesson #13)
and Delta Modulation (Lesson #14) are used for possible reductions in the average
number of bits that may have to be transmitted (or stored) for a given analog signal. The
example of speech signal has been considered extensively.
Given
Subject to
design
Encoder Decoder
Modulatio Demodulato
TX RX
Channel
Fig. 1.1.2 A possible break up of the previous diagram (following Shannon’s ideas)
We will see later that a modulation channel usually accepts modulated signals as
analog waveforms at its inputs and delivers another version of the modulated signal in the
form of analog waveforms. Such channels are also referred as ‘waveform channels’. The
‘channel’ in Fig. 1.1.1, on the other hand, appears to accept some ‘encoded’ information
from the source and deliver some ‘decoded’ information to the sink. Both the figures are
potentially useful for describing the same digital communication system. On comparison
of the two figures, the reader is encouraged to infer that the ‘channel’ in Fig. 1.1.1
includes the ‘modulation channel’ and the modulation- demodulation operations of Fig.
1.1.2. The ‘channel’ of Fig. 1.1.1 is widely denoted as a ‘discrete channel’, implying that
it accepts discrete-time-discrete-amplitude signals and also delivers discrete-time-
discrete-amplitude signals.
In the following, we introduce a few short tables, which may help a reader to
recapitulate some relevant issues of electrical communications. Table 1.1.1 lists some of
the important events which have contributed to the developments in electrical
communication. Table 1.1.2 presents different frequency bands with typical applications
that are commonly used for the purpose of electrical communications. This table is very
useful for our subsequent lessons. Table 1.1.3 mentions frequency ranges for a few
popular broadcast and communication services. Table 1.1.4 gives an idea of typical
centre frequencies and the nominal bandwidths that are available for five frequency
bands. It is important to note that larger bandwidths are available when the operating
frequency bands are higher. Table 1.1.5 provides an idea of typical power losses of
several physical transmission media at representative operating frequency. It may be
noted that all transmission media are not equally suitable at all frequencies. An important
factor other than the power loss in a physical medium is its cost per unit length.
30–300 KHz 10 Km- 1 Km Low Frequency (LF) Air, water, Radio beacons, Ground
copper cable wave communication
Any radio operation at 1GHz or beyond (upto several tens of GHz) is also termed as
‘microwave’ operation.
Cellular Telephony and 1.8 GHz – 2.0 GHz Mobile telephone communication systems
Personal Communication
Systems (PCS)
ISM (Industrial 2.4 GHz – 2.4835 Unlicensed band for use at low
Scientific and GHz transmission power
Medical) Band
WLAN (Wireless2.4 GHz band and Two unlicensed bands are used for
Local Area Network) 5.5 GHz establishing high speed data network
among willing computers
UWB (Ultra Wide 3.7 GHz – 10.5 GHz Emerging new standard for short
Band) distance wireless communication at a
very high bit rate (typically, 100 Mbps)
Table 1.1.4 Some Carrier frequency values and nominal bandwidth that may be
available at the carrier frequency
Table 1.1.5 Typical power losses during transmission through a few media
Problems
Q1.1.1) Mention two reasons justifying the source encoding operation in a digital
communication system.
Q1.1.2) Give examples of three channels, which are used for purpose of
communication
Q1.1.3) Give three examples of types of signals that a source (Fig 1.1.2) may
generate.
Q1.1.4) Signaling in UHF band allows higher bit rate compared to HF band –
criticize this comment.