ELET6430

DIGITAL
COMMUNICATIONS
SHANNON CAPACITY
THEOREM

Effectiveness of a communication
system
We now consider the effectiveness of
a communication system given that
the channel has limited bandwidth
and introduces additive noise. Noise
appearing in the received signal
raises the probability of errors
occurring during
detection/demodulation

The Basic SNR Parameter for

Digital Communication Systems
A familiar figure of merit for analogue
communication systems is the average signal
power to average noise power ratio (S/N or
SNR).
In digital communications, we more often use
Eb/N0, a normalized version of SNR, as a figure
of merit. Eb is bit energy and can be described
as the signal power S, times the bit duration Tb.
N0 is noise power spectral density (Watts/Hz),
and can be described as noise power N, divided
by bandwidth W.

the bit time and bit rate Rb are

Since

reciprocal, we can replace Tb with 1/Rb

and write:

Or

is a standard quality measure for digital

communications system performance, and is
considered a metric that can be used to
characterize the performance of one system
against another.

Shannon-Hartley theorem
Is it possible to design a system that has
no bit errors at the output even when
noise is introduced in the channel?
Shannon showed that the system
capacity, C, of a channel perturbed by
additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) is
a function of the average received signal
power, S, average noise power N, and
the bandwidth W.

 The
Shannon-Hartley theorem can be

stated as:

When W is in hertz and the logarithm is

taken to base 2, as shown, the capacity
of the system is in bits/sec.
It is theoretically possible to transmit
information over such a channel at any
rate, R, where R C, with an arbitrarily
small error probability by using a
sufficiently complicated coding scheme.

 Shannons work showed that the

values of bandwidth W, signal S, and
noise N set a limit on the
transmission rate not on the error
probability.
Equation 1 can be used to
graphically exhibit a bound for the
achievable performance of practical
systems.

 This plot, shown below, gives the

normalized channel capacity CIW in
bits/s/Hz as a function of the channel
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).

Shannon limit
There

exists a limiting value of Eb/N0

below which there can be no errorfree communication at any
information rate. From equation
(2C.3):

 Using

the identity

We can calculate the limiting value of

Eb/N0 as follows:
Let

Then

 And
In the limit, as , we get
Or in decibels

This value of Eb/N0 is called the

Shannon limit.

Normalized channel bandwidth vs

channel Eb/N0

Conclusion
Shannon's work provided a
theoretical proof for the existence of
codes that could improve the Pb
performance, or reduce the required
Eb/N0 from the levels of the uncoded
binary modulation schemes to levels
approaching the limiting curve.

Examples
Consider a voice-grade telephone circuit with
a bandwidth of 3 kHz. Assume that the circuit
can be modeled as an A WGN channel.
(a) What is the capacity of such a circuit if the
SNR is 30 dB?
(b) What is the minimum SNR required for a
data rate of 4800 bits/son such a voicegrade circuit?
(c) Repeat part (b) for a data rate of 19,200
bits/s.

Examples
Consider that a 100-kbits/s data
stream is to be transmitted on a
voice-grade telephone circuit (with a
bandwidth of 3kHz).
Is it possible to approach error-free
transmission with a SNR of 10 dB?
Justify your answer.
If it is not possible. Suggest system
modifications that might be made.