AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER AND COMMUNICATIONS ENGINEERING

PCM – BASEBAND MODULATION –LINE CODES

Digital Communications Systems

CCE 411

AUST – 2022

Dr. Gaby Abou Haidar

 GABY ABOU HAIDAR, PH.D.

Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)

 With the sampling and quantization processes at our disposal, we are now ready to describe pulse-code modulation
(PCM), which is the most basic form of digital pulse modulation.
 In PCM, a message signal is represented by a sequence of coded pulses, which is accomplished by representing the
signal in discrete form in both time and amplitude.
 The basic operations performed in the transmitter of a PCM system are sampling, quantization, and encoding, as
shown in the coming figure; the low-pass filter prior to sampling is included merely to prevent aliasing of the message
signal.
 Quantizing and encoding operations are usually performed in the same circuit, called an analog-to-digital converter.
 The analog message is sampled and quantized to one of L levels; then each quantized sample is digitally encoded into
an codewords.
 For baseband transmission, the codeword bits will then be transformed to pulse waveforms.
 Assume that an analog signal x(t) is limited in its excursions to the range −4 to +4. The step size between quantization
levels has been set at 1 V.
 Thus, eight quantization levels are employed; these are located at−3.5,−2.5,···,+3.5 V.
 We assign the code number 0 to the level at−3.5 V, the code number 1 to the level at−2.5 V, and so on, until the level
at 3.5 V, which is assigned the code number 7.
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Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)

 Each code number has its representation in binary arithmetic, ranging from 000 for code number 0 to 111 for code
number 7.
 Why have the voltage levels been chosen in this manner, compared with using a sequence of consecutive integers,
1,2,3,...?
 The choice of voltage levels is guided by two constraints. First, the quantile intervals between the levels should be
equal; and second, it is convenient for the levels to be symmetrical about zero.
 Note that each sample is assigned to one of eight levels or three-bit PCM sequence.
 Suppose that the analog signal is a musical passage, which is sampled at the Nyquist rate. And, suppose that when
we listen to the music in digital form, it sounds terrible.
 What would we do to improve the fidelity? Increasing the number of levels will reduce the quantization noise.
 If we double the number of levels to 16, what are the consequences? In that case, each analog sample will be
represented as a four-bit sequence.
 Will that cost anything? In a real-time communication system, the messages must not be delayed.
 Hence, the transmission time for each sample must be the same, regardless of how many bits represent the sample.
Hence, when there are more bits per sample, the bits must move faster; in other words, they must be replaced by
“skinnier” bits.
 The data rate is thus increased, and the cost is a greater transmission bandwidth.
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Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)

 This explains how one can generally obtain better fidelity at the cost of more transmission bandwidth.
 Be aware, however, that there are some communication applications where delay is permissible.
 For example, consider the transmission of planetary images from spacecraft.
 The Galileo project, launched in 1989, was on such a mission to photograph and transmit images of the
planet Jupiter.
 The Galileo spacecraft arrived at its Jupiter destination in 1995.
 The journey took several years; therefore, any excess signal of several minutes (or hours or days) would
certainly not be a problem.
 In such cases, the cost of more quantization levels and greater fidelity need not be bandwidth; it can be
time delay.
 GABY ABOU HAIDAR, PH.D.

Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)

Basic steps in a PCM
transmitter

Natural sampling, uniform

quantization and PCM
 GABY ABOU HAIDAR, PH.D.

Regenerative Repeaters
 The most important feature of a PCM system lies in the ability to control the effects of distortion and noise produced
by transmitting a PCM signal over a channel.

 This capability is accomplished by reconstructing the PCM signal by means of a chain of regenerative repeaters
located at sufficiently close spacing along the transmission route.

 Three basic functions are performed by a regenerative repeater: equalization, timing, and decision making.

 The equalizer shapes the received pulses so as to compensate for the effects of amplitude and phase distortions
produced by the transmission characteristics of the channel.

 The timing circuitry provides a periodic pulse train, derived from the received pulses; this is done for renewed
sampling of the equalized pulses at the instants of time where the signal-to-noise ratio is a maximum.

 The sample so extracted is compared to a predetermined threshold in the decision-making device.

 In each bit interval, a decision is then made on whether the received symbol is a 1 or 0 on the basis of whether the
threshold is exceeded or not.
 GABY ABOU HAIDAR, PH.D.

Regenerative Repeaters
 If the threshold is exceeded, a clean new pulse representing symbol 1 is transmitted to the next repeater.
 Otherwise, another clean new pulse representing symbol 0 is transmitted.
 In this way, the accumulation of distortion and noise in a repeater span is removed, provided the
disturbance is not too large to cause an error in the decision-making process.
 Ideally, except for delay, the regenerated signal is exactly the same as the information-bearing signal that
was originally transmitted.
 The repeater is formed by a matched filter followed by a sampler and a decision-making device.
 In fact, this combination of devices is also used at the front end of the PCM decoder.
 The matched filter has the role of maximizing the output signal to-noise ratio.
 It will be studied in the next chapter.
 The sampler, which is supplied with a timing circuit, samples the matched filter output at the time
instants where the signal-to-noise ratio is maximum.
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Example:
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Baseband Modulation
 It was shown in previous section how analog waveforms are transformed into binary digits via the use of PCM.
 There is nothing “physical” about the digits resulting from this process. Digits are just abstractions- a way to describe
the message information.
 Thus, we need something physical that will represent or “carry” the digits. We will represent the binary digits with
electrical pulses in order to transmit them through a baseband channel.
 The sequence of electrical pulses having the pattern can be used to transmit the information in the PCM bit stream,
and hence the information in the quantized samples of a message.
 The presence or absence of a pulse is a symbol.
 A particular arrangement of symbols used in a code to represent a single value of the discrete set is called a codeword.
 In a binary code, each symbol may be either of two distinct values, such as a negative pulse or positive pulse. The two
symbols of the binary code are customarily denoted as 0 and 1.
 In practice, a binary code is preferred over other codes (e.g., ternary code) for two reasons:
1. The maximum advantage over the effects of noise in a transmission medium is obtained by using a binary code,
because a binary symbol withstands a relatively high level of noise.
2. The binary code is easy to generate and regenerate.
 Suppose that, in a binary code, each code word consists of R bits (the bit is an acronym for binary digit).
 Then R denotes the number of bits per sample. Hence, by using such a code, we represent a total of 2R distinct
numbers. For example, a sample quantized into one of 256 levels may be represented by an 8-bit code word.
 GABY ABOU HAIDAR, PH.D.

PCM Waveforms Types

 When pulse modulation is applied to a binary symbol, the resulting binary waveform is called a PCM waveform.
 There are several types of PCM waveforms; in telephony applications, these waveforms are often called line codes.
 When pulse modulation is applied to non-binary symbol, the resulting waveform is called an M-ary pulse waveform,
of which there are several types.
 The PCM waveforms fall into the following four groups:

1. Non-return to zero (NRZ)

2. Return to Zero (RZ)
3. Phase encoded
4. Multilevel binary

Example of waveform representation of binary digits. (a) PCM

sequence. (b) Pulse representation of PCM. (c) Pulse wave-form
 GABY ABOU HAIDAR, PH.D.

Properties of Line Coding

Following are the properties of line coding

 As the coding is done to make more bits transmit on a single signal, the bandwidth used is much
reduced.
 For a given bandwidth, the power is efficiently used.
 The probability of error is much reduced.
 Error detection is done and the bipolar too has a correction capability.
 Power density is much favorable.
 The timing content is adequate.
 Long strings of 1s and 0s are avoided to maintain transparency.
 GABY ABOU HAIDAR, PH.D.

PCM Waveforms Types

 The NRZ group is probably the most commonly used PCM waveform.
 It can be partitioned into the following subgroups: NRZ-L (L for level), NRZ-M (M for mark), and NRZ-S (S for space).
 A binary one is represented by one voltage level and a binary zero is represented by another voltage level.
 There is a change in level whenever the data change from a one to a zero or from a zero to a one.
 With NRZ-M, the one, or mark, is represented by a change in level, and the zero, or space, is represented by no change
in level.
 NRZ-L is used in digital logic circuits, NRZ-M is used primarily in magnetic tape recording.
 The RZ waveforms consist of unipolar-RZ, bipolar-RZ, and RZ-AMI.
 These codes find application in baseband data transmission and in magnetic recording.
 With unipolar-RZ, a one is represented by a half-bit-wide pulse, and a zero is represented by the absence of a pulse.
With bipolar-RZ, the ones and zeros are represented by opposite-level pulses that are one-half bit wide.
 There is a pulse present in each bit interval. RZ-AMI (“alternate mark inversion”)is a signaling scheme used in
telephone systems.
 The ones are represented by equal-amplitude alternative pulses.
 The zeros are represented by the absence of pulses.
 The phase-encoded group consists of bi-φ-L (bi-phase-level), better known as Manchester coding; bi-φ-M (bi-phase-
mark); bi-φ-S (bi-phase-space); and delay modulation (DM), or Miller coding. 6/31
 GABY ABOU HAIDAR, PH.D.

PCM Waveforms Types

 The phase-encoding schemes are used in magnetic recording systems and optical communications and in some
satellite telemetry links.

 With bi-φ-L, a one is represented by a half-bit-wide pulse positioned during the first half of the bit interval; a zero is
represented by half-bit-wide pulse positioned during the second half of the bit interval.
 With bi-φ-M, a transition occurs at the beginning of every bit interval.
 A one is represented by a second transition one-half bit interval later; a zero is represented by no second transition.
With bi-φ-S, a transition also occurs at the beginning of every bit interval.

 A one is represented by no second transition; a zero is represented by a second transition one-half bit interval later.
With delay modulation, a one is represented by a transition at the mid-point of the interval.
 A zero is represented by no transition, unless it is followed by another zero. In this case, a transition is placed at the
end of the bit interval of the first zero.
 The previously shown line codes differ not only in their time domain representations but also in their power spectra
as to whether they contain DC components represented by impulse functions (RZ contains DC components which
cause a loss of power).
 Also, the line spectra differ in the required transmission bandwidth. Since the transmission bandwidth is inversely
proportional to the bit duration, then RZ needs twice the bandwidth required for NRZ.
 GABY ABOU HAIDAR, PH.D.

Various PCM Line Codes

 GABY ABOU HAIDAR, PH.D.

Bit Rate, Bit Duration and Bandwidth In PCM

 The bit rate in PCM depends on the sampling rate, 1/Ts, the number of quantization levels L, and the numbers
of bits per sample R. The bit rate is given by :

 For a fixed length binary code:

 The bit duration is the inverse of the bit rate:

 For the case of NRZ line codes, the transmission bandwidth is:

 For the case of RZ line codes, the transmission bandwidth is

twice as much:
 GABY ABOU HAIDAR, PH.D.

Bit Rate, Bit Duration and Bandwidth In PCM

 Of course the bandwidth computed as above considers the baseband binary transmission case
without the involvement of a modulation carrier.
 Also, the bandwidth is defined by accounting for the significant frequency components of the different
line codes.
 These components are assumed contained between 0 and the first or second zero crossing of the
power spectra of the line codes with the frequency axis.
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Example:
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Virtues, Limitations and Modifications of PCM

The following advantages can be noted for PCM systems:

1. Good performance in the presence of channel noise and interference.

2. Efficient regeneration of the coded signal along the transmission path.

3. Efficient exchange of increased channel bandwidth for improved signal- to-noise ratio obeying an
exponential law.

4. A uniform format for the transmission of different kinds of baseband signals. This allows the integration of
these signals in a common network.
 GABY ABOU HAIDAR, PH.D.

Virtues, Limitations and Modifications of PCM

 These advantages, however, are attained at the cost of increased system complexity and channel
bandwidth.
 For instance, if we desire to send a 4 kHz voice signal using PCM (µ−law), it requires 8000 samples/sec times
8 bits/s sample or 64000 bits/sec.
 Hence, depending upon the type of line coding and pulse shaping used, the digitized voice signal could
require a bandwidth of roughly 64 kHz, or 16 times that of the analog signal.
 Although certain advantages accrue with this bandwidth expansion, engineers began to wonder if this bit
rate could be reduced without affecting the quality and intelligibility of the speech.
 Therefore, we will examine techniques for reducing the bit rate required to represent speech, images, or
other messages, with some minimum or acceptable loss in fidelity.
 Signals such as speech and images are called sources, and the methods employed for bit rate reduction are
variously said to be performing redundancy removal, entropy reduction, data compression, source coding,
or source coding with a fidelity criterion.
 In the next sections we present DPCM and DM compression techniques which permit the removal of
redundancies which are usually present in a PCM signal and this leads to a reduction in the bit rate of the
transmitted data without a serious degradation in system performance.
 GABY ABOU HAIDAR, PH.D.

Virtues, Limitations and Modifications of PCM

 In fact, the use of data compression techniques adds to the system complexity and, thus, to the cost of
implementation.
 But, this cost increase is traded off for a reduced bit rate and therefore reduced bandwidth requirement.
Although PCM involves the use of complex operations, today they can be implemented using
commercially available VLSI chips.
 If, however, the simplicity of implementation is desired, then Differential Pulse Code Modulation (DPCM)
or Delta Modulation (DM) can be used as alternatives to PCM.
 In DPCM and DM, an intentional oversampling of the message signal is performed to allow for the use of
a simple quantization strategy.
 The increase in transmission bandwidth was a reason for concern in the past.
 Today, however, it is not a real concern for two reasons:

 The first is the availability of wideband communication channels. This has been made possible by the
deployment of communications satellites for broadcasting and ever increasing use of fiber optics for
networking.
 The second is the use of data compression techniques.
 GABY ABOU HAIDAR, PH.D.

“At its heart engineering is

about using science to find
creative practical solutions. It’s
a noble profession.”

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