Quaid-e-Awam

University of Engineering & Lecture No. 7,8

Technology Nawabshah

Communications Systems

Line Impairments/Losses
Transmission Flaws
Attenuations, Distortion, Noise , SNR & Decibels

Dr. Abdul Sattar Saand

(Assistant Professor) Department of Electrical
Engineering, QUEST.
Introduction-
TRANSMISSION/LINE IMPAIRMENTS/ Flaws-
Limiting Factors.-
 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 !

 Signal received may differ from signal transmitted

 Analog - degradation of signal quality
 Digital - bit errors

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Transmission Impairments- Limiting Factors

 There are three causes of

impairments are:
 Attenuation
 Distortion &
Attenuation
 Noise

Distortion

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Attenuation
 Signal strength falls off with distance
 Depends on medium.
 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. Some of the
electrical energy in the signal is converted to heat. To compensate for this
loss, amplifiers are used to amplify the signal.
 Received signal strength:
 must be enough to be detected
 must be sufficiently higher than noise to be received without error

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Attenuation….

 Therefore the attenuation is a function of the nature of

the transmission medium and the physical length of the
channel.
 More difficult to separate the signal from noise at higher
transmission speeds
 Amplifiers: is used to restore original strength of the
signal

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Example .1

Example .2

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Example.3

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Distortion
 Distortion means that the signal changes its form or shape that causes delay in
arriving at the final destination.

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Signal and Noise
 Signal is the information you want to transmit.
 Noise is just another signal, added to and interfering with
the signal you want to transmit.
 Some noise is random and unavoidable that comes from
natural sources.
 Some noise is intentional and is actually someone else’s
signal.
 A party can be “noisy” even though most of the “noise” is
just conversations other than yours!

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Noise
 Noise is an unwanted form of energy that tends to interfere with the reception
and accurate reproduction of the wanted Signal.
 On any telecommunication link there will be noise and distortion of Some degree.
Various techniques are used to reduce these factors to an acceptable minimum
level.
 Noise is always present is in electronic systems and its effect can be devastating
to the performance of the system.
 There are several types of noise, such as

 thermal noise,

 induced noise,

 crosstalk, and impulse noise, these noises 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. These
devices act as a transmit antenna, and the transmission medium acts as the
receiving antenna.
 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
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comes from power lines, lightning, and so on. Lecture Notes in Ccommunication Systems By
Dr. Abdul Sattar Saand
Noise
• There are two Types of Noise.

• External and Internal Noise Noise

External Noise: Originates in the communication medium

 Man-made noise- ignition noise

 Generated by equipment such as motors External Internal

 Atmospheric noise (electrical discharges) Noise Noise
 Dominates at lower frequencies.

 Space noise (Mostly solar noise)

 Dominates at higher frequencies and can be a serious problem in

satellite communications
Internal Noise: Generated by components within a communication system
(thermal noise).

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Transmission Impairments Visually

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Noise

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Noise

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Signal-to-Noise Ratio
 Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR): Is an important measure of performance in
Communication System. The SNR determines Quantitatively the Quality of
Signal that is corrupted by Noise.
 SNR is defined as the Ratio of Signal Power to Noise Power at the Same
point. Either at input or output of a component of the Communication
System.

Mathematically

S/N= Signal Power/Noise Power =Ps/Pn

 S/N is normally measured in dB (decibel). It is a relationship between the

signal we want ,versus the noise that we do not want, which is in the
medium.
 It is a fractional relationship (that is, before we take the logarithm):

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Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR)

 Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR)

 Is expressed in decibels

 PS 
S NR dB   10 log10 
P 

 N 
where: PS is the signal power in watts
PN is the noise power in watts

A SNR of zero dB means that noise power equals the signal

power.

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Noise Ratio (NR)
Noise Figure (NF) or Nose Factor
 The ratio of the signal to noise ratio at the input of a network to the signal to
noise ratio at the output.
 Noise Figure is used to compare the performance of Receiver with respect
to Noise.

SNR input
NR 
SNR output
NF = 10 log (NR)

NF (dB) = (SNR) input (dB) –(SNR) output (dB)

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Loudness of sound
=> The level of sound.

- measuring unit: decibel

dB
- The higher the decibel, the louder
is the sound.

- Can be measured with a decibel

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meter .
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- The following photos show two different
kinds of decibel meters:

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Data Rate Limits - Conclusions
 A very important consideration in data communications is how fast
we can send the 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).

 If the noise is “soft” it is easy to pick out the signal

 If the noise is “loud” it introduces many errors into the received signal
 In a digital communications channel the noise level affects the channel
capacity.

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 Attenuation - the loss of a signal’s strength as it travels away from
its source.

 Amplifier - an electronic device that increases the voltage, or

power, of the signals.

 Regeneration - when digital signals are repeated, they are actually

retransmitted in their original, pure form, without any noise.

 Repeater - a device that regenerates a digital signal.

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Shannon’s Theorem
(Shannon’s Limit for Information Capacity)
 Claude Shannon at Bell Labs figured out how much information a
channel could theoretically carry:

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References
 James Martin “Telecommunication and The Computer” Third Edition ,2006 .
 Frank R. Dungman Electronic Communications Systems” Third Edition
2002.
 Wayne Tomasi :Introduction to Data Communications and
Networking”,2008.
 Marion Cole, Introduction to Telecommunications (Voice ,Data and the
Internet) Second Edition ,2008.
 www- Interenet.
 www.fab.org.gov

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