Chapter 2
Data and Signals
3.1 Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Note
To be transmitted, data must be
transformed to electromagnetic signals.
3.2
3-1 ANALOG AND DIGITAL
• Data can be analog or digital..
• The term analog data refers to information that is continuous;
Analog data takes on continuous values.
• Digital data refers to information that has discrete states.
Digital data take on discrete values..
3.3
Note
Signals can be analog or digital.
Analog signals can have an infinite
number of values in a range;
digital signals can have only a
limited number of values.
3.4
Figure 3.1 Comparison of analog and digital
signals
3.5
Note
In data communications, we commonly
use periodic analog signals and
nonperiodic digital signals.
3.6
3-2 PERIODIC ANALOG SIGNALS
• A periodic signal completes a pattern within a measurable time frame,
called a period, and repeats that pattern over subsequent identical periods.
• The completion of one full pattern is called a cycle.
• A non periodic signal changes without exhibiting a pattern or cycle that
repeats over time.
• Periodic analog signals can be classified as simple or composite.
• A simple periodic analog signal, a sine wave,, cannot be decomposed into
simpler signals.
• A composite periodic analog signal is composed of multiple sine waves.
Sine wave
• The sine wave is the most fundamental form of a periodic
analog signal.
• Each cycle consists of a single arc above the time axis followed
by a single arc below it.
• A sine wave can be represented by three parameters: the peak
amplitude, the frequency, and the phase. These three parameters
fully describe a sine wave.
Peak Amplitude
• The peak amplitude of a signal is the absolute value of its
highest intensity, proportional to the energy it carries.
• For electric signals, peak amplitude is normally measured in
volts
Figure 3.3 Two signals with the same phase and
frequency, but different amplitudes
3.10
Period and Frequency
• Period refers to the amount of time, in seconds, a signal needs
to complete 1 cycle.
• Frequency refers to the number of periods in 1second.
• Note that period and frequency are just one characteristic
defined in two ways.
• Period is the inverse of frequency, and frequency is the
inverse of period, as the following formulas show.
3.11
Figure 3.4 Two signals with the same amplitude and
phase, but different frequencies
3.12
Table 3.1 Units of period and frequency
3.13
Example 3.3
The power we use at home has a frequency of 60 Hz.
The period of this sine wave can be determined as
follows:
3.14
Example 3.5
The period of a signal is 100 ms. What is its frequency in
kilohertz?
Solution
First we change 100 ms to seconds, and then we
calculate the frequency from the period (1 Hz = 10−3
kHz).
3.16
Note
If a signal does not change at all, its
frequency is zero.
If a signal changes instantaneously, its
frequency is infinite.
3.17
Phase
• Phase describes the position of the waveform relative to
time 0.
• If we think of the wave as something that can be shifted
backward or forward along the time axis, phase describes
the amount of that shift.
• Indicates status of first cycle.
• Phase is measured in degrees or radians.
• 360° = 2π rad;
• 1° = 2π/360 rad
• 1 rad = 360/(2π).
Figure 3.5 Three sine waves with the same amplitude and
frequency, but different phases
3.19
I. A sine wave with a phase of 0° starts at time 0 with a zero
amplitude. The amplitude is increasing.
II. A sine wave with a phase of 90° starts at time 0 with a peak
amplitude. The amplitude is decreasing.
III. A sine wave with a phase of 180° starts at time 0 with a zero
amplitude. The amplitude is decreasing.
Note
The bandwidth of a composite signal is
the difference between the
highest and the lowest frequencies
contained in that signal.
3.21
Figure 3.12 The bandwidth of periodic and nonperiodic composite
signals
3.22
Example 3.10
If a periodic signal is decomposed into five sine
waves with frequencies of 100, 300, 500, 700, and 900
Hz, what is its bandwidth? Draw the
spectrum, assumingall components have a
maximum amplitude of 10 V. Solution
Let fh be the highest frequency, fl the lowest
frequency, and B the bandwidth. Then
The spectrum has only five spikes, at 100, 300, 500, 700,
and 900 Hz (see Figure 3.13).
3.23
Figure 3.13 The bandwidth for Example
3.10
3.24
Example 3.11
A periodic signal has a bandwidth of 20 Hz. The highest
frequency is 60 Hz. What is the lowest frequency? Draw
the spectrum if the signal contains all frequencies of the
same amplitude.
Solution
Let fh be the highest frequency, fl the lowest
frequency, and B the bandwidth. Then
The spectrum contains all integer frequencies. We show
this by a series of spikes (see Figure 3.14).
3.25
Figure 3.14 The bandwidth for Example 3.11
3.26
3-3 DIGITAL SIGNALS
In addition to being represented by an analog signal, information
can also be represented by a digital signal.
For example, a 1 can be encoded as a positive voltage and a 0
as zero voltage.
A digital signal can have more than two levels. In this case, we can
send more than 1 bit for each level.
If a signal has L levels
Bit rate-number of bits sent in 1s, expressed in bits per second
(bps).
Figure 3.16 Two digital signals: one with two signal levels and the
other with four signal levels
3.28
Example 3.16
A digital signal has eight levels. How many bits are
needed per level? We calculate the number of bits from
the formula
Each signal level is represented by 3 bits.
3.29
3-4 TRANSMISSION IMPAIRMENT
Signals travel through transmission media, which are not
perfect.
The imperfection causes signal impairment..
This means that the signal at the beginning of the
medium is not the same as the signal at the end of
the medium.
What is sent is not what is received. Three causes of
impairment are attenuation,, distortion,, and noise..
Figure 3.25 Causes of impairment
3.33
Atteneuation
• Attenuation means a loss of energy.
• When a signal, simple or composite, travels through a medium,
it loses some of its energy in overcoming the resistance of the
medium.
• That is why a wire carrying electric signals gets warm, after a
while. Some of the electrical energy in the signal is converted to
heat.
• To compensate for this loss, amplifiers are used to amplify the
signal
Figure 3.26 Attenuation
3.35
Example 3.26
Suppose a signal travels through a transmission medium
and its power is reduced to one-half. This means that P2
is (1/2)P1 In this case, the attenuation (loss of power)
can be calculated as
A loss of 3 dB (–3 dB) is equivalent to losing one-
half the power
Example 3.27
A signal travels through an amplifier, and its power is
increased 10 times. This means that P2 = 10P1 . In this
case, the amplification (gain of power) can b calculated
as
3.37
Distortion
Distortion means that the signal changes its form or shape.
Distortion can occur in a composite signal made of different frequencies.
Each signal component has its own propagation speed through a medium and,
therefore, its own delay in arriving at the final destination.
Differences in delay may create a difference in phase.
In other words, signal components at the receiver have phases different from
what they had at the sender.
The shape of the composite signal is therefore not the same.
Figure 3.28 Distortion
3.39
Noise
• Several types of noise, such as thermal noise, induced noise, crosstalk, and
impulse noise, may corrupt the signal.
• Thermal noise is the random motion of electrons in a wire, which creates an
extra signal not originally sent by the transmitter.
• Induced noise comes from sources such as motors and appliances.
• Crosstalk is the effect of one wire on the other. One wire acts as a sending
antenna and the other as the receiving antenna.
• Impulse noise is a spike (a signal with high energy in a very short time) that
comes from power lines, lightning, and so on
Figure 3.29 Noise
3.41
SNR( Signal to Noise Ratio)
Example 3.31
The power of a signal is 10 mW and the power of
the noise is 1 μW; what are the values of SNR and
SNRdB ?
Solution
The values of SNR and SNRdB can be calculated
as follows:
3.43
Example 3.32
The values of SNR and SNRdB for a noiseless
channel are
We can never achieve this ratio in real life; it is an ideal.
3.44
3-5 DATA RATE LIMITS
A very important consideration in data communications
is how fast we can send data, in bits per second, over a
channel. Data rate depends on three factors:
1.. The bandwidth available
2. The level of the signals we use
3.. The quality of the channel (the level of noise)
Topics discussed in this section:
Noiseless Channel: Nyquist Bit
Rate Noisy Channel: Shannon
Capacity Using Both Limits
3.45
Two theoretical formulas were developed to calculate the
data rate:
Nyquist for a noiseless channel
Shannon for a noisy channel.
1. Noiseless Channel: Nyquist Bit Rate
• For a noiseless channel, the Nyquist bit rate formula defines the
theoretical maximum bit rate.
• The maximum bit rate is the highest number of bits that can be
transmitted over a communication channel per unit of time,
typically measured in bits per second (bps).
• In this formula, bandwidth is the bandwidth of the channel, L is the
number of signal levels used to represent data.
Example 3.34
Consider a noiseless channel with a bandwidth of 3000
Hz transmitting a signal with two signal levels. The
maximum bit rate can be calculated as
3.48
Example 3.35
Consider the same noiseless channel transmitting a
signal with four signal levels (for each level, we send 2
bits). The maximum bit rate can be calculated as
3.49
2. Noisy Channel: Shannon Capacity
• In 1944, Claude Shannon introduced a formula, called the Shannon
capacity, to determine the theoretical highest data rate for a noisy
channel:
• In this formula, bandwidth is the bandwidth of the channel, SNR is the
signal-to-noise ratio, and capacity is the capacity of the channel in bits
per second.
Example 3.39
The signal-to-noise ratio is often given in decibels.
Assume that SNRdB = 36 and the channel bandwidth is 2
MHz. Find The theoretical channel capacity.
3.51
Example 3.41
We have a channel with a 1-MHz bandwidth. The SNR
for this channel is 63. What are the appropriate bit rate
and signal level?
Solution
First, we use the Shannon formula to find the
upper limit.
3.53
The Shannon formula gives us 6 Mbps, the upper limit.
For better performance we choose something lower, 4
Mbps, for example. Then we use the Nyquist formula to
find the number of signal levels.
3-6 PERFORMANCE// REFER TEXT BOOK
One important issue in networking is the performance of
the network—how good is it? We discuss quality of
service, an overall measurement of network performance,
in greater detail in Chapter 24.. In this section, we
introduce terms that we need for future chapters.
Topics discussed in this section:
Bandwidth
Throughput
Latency (Delay)
Bandwidth-
Delay Product
3.55
Bandwidth- Bandwidth in hertz is the range of frequencies
contained in a composite signal or the range of frequencies a
channel can pass.
The term bandwidth can also refer to the number of bits per
second that a channel, a link, or even a network can transmit.
Throughput- The throughput is a measure of how fast we can
actually send data through a network.
Latency- The latency or delay defines how long it takes for an
entire message to completely arrive at the destination from the
time the first bit is sent out from the source.
Propogation time- Propagation time measures the time required
for a bit to travel from the source to the destination
Example 3.44
A network with bandwidth of 10 Mbps can pass only an
average of 12,000 frames per minute with each frame
carrying an average of 10,000 bits. What is the
throughput of this network?
Solution
We can calculate the throughput as
The throughput is almost one-fifth of the bandwidth in
this case.
3.57
Example 3.45
What is the propagation time if the distance between the
two points is 12,000 km? Assume the propagation speed
to be 2.4 × 108 m/s in cable.
Solution
We can calculate the propagation time as
The example shows that a bit can go over the Atlantic
Ocean in only 50 ms if there is a direct cable between the
source and the destination.
3.58
Example 3.46
What are the propagation time and the transmission
time for a 2.5-kbyte message (an e-mail) if the
bandwidth of the network is 1 Gbps? Assume that the
distance between the sender and the receiver is 12,000
km and that light travels at 2.4 × 108 m/s.
Solution
We can calculate the propagation and transmission time
as shown on the next slide:
3.59
Example 3.46 (continued)
Note that in this case, because the message is short and
the bandwidth is high, the dominant factor is the
propagation time, not the transmission time. The
transmission time can be ignored.
3.60
Example 3.47
What are the propagation time and the transmission
time for a 5-Mbyte message (an image) if the bandwidth
of the network is 1 Mbps? Assume that the distance
between the sender and the receiver is 12,000 km and
that light travels at 2.4 × 108 m/s.
Solution
We can calculate the propagation and
transmission times as shown on the next slide.
3.61
Example 3.47 (continued)
Note that in this case, because the message is very long
and the bandwidth is not very high, the dominant factor
is the transmission time, not the propagation time. The
propagation time can be ignored.
3.62
