TRANSMISSION IMPAIRMENT

Attenuation, Distortion, Noise , Data rate limits: Nyquist Bit Rate and
Shannon Capacity
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.
Attenuation
• 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, if not hot, 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 shows the effect of attenuation and amplification.
Attenuation
Decibel
•
Example
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.

3.6
Example
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 be calculated
as

3.7
Example
One reason that engineers use the decibel to measure the
changes in the strength of a signal is that decibel
numbers can be added (or subtracted) when we are
measuring several points (cascading) instead of just two.
In Figure 3.27 a signal travels from point 1 to point 4. In
this case, the decibel value can be calculated as

3.8
Example
Sometimes the decibel is used to measure signal power
in milliwatts. In this case, it is referred to as dBm and is
calculated as dBm = 10 log10 Pm , where Pm is the power
in milliwatts. Calculate the power of a signal with dBm =
−30.

Solution:
We can calculate the power in the signal as

3.9
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 if the delay is not
exactly the same as the period duration. 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. The
Figure shows the effect of distortion on a composite signal.
Distortion
Distortion
• Delay distortion is critical for digital data.
▪ Because of delay distortion, some of the signal components of one bit position
will spill over into other bit position, causing intersymbol interference (ISI),
which is a major limitation to maximum bit rate.
Noise
• Noise is unwanted electromagnetic energy which causes to corrupt the
data signals. Noise signal interfere with the data signals. Whether this
interference is constructive or destructive, it corrupt the data signals.
• Types of noise:
✔ Thermal noise,
✔ Induced noise,
✔ Crosstalk, and
✔ Impulse noise,
Types of Noise
•
Types of Noise
• Induced noise comes from sources such as motors and appliances. These devices
act as a sending 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. Crosstalk refers to unwanted
coupling between signal paths.
• Example: hear another conversation when using the telephone
• Three causes of crosstalk
• electrical coupling between transmission media Example: occur by electrical
coupling between nearby unshielded cable such as twisted pair
• Poor control of frequency response (i.e., defective filter or poor filter design)
• Nonlinearity performance in analog (FDM) multiplex systems Example:
coaxial cable lines carrying multiple signals
Types of Noise
• Impulse noise is a spike (a signal with high energy in a very short
time) that comes from power lines, lightning, and so on.
• Impulse noise is non-continuous
• irregular pulses or noise spikes of short duration of relatively high amplitude.
• Generated from a variety of causes, including external electromagnetic
disturbances such as lightning
• primary source of error in digital data communication
sharp spike of energy of 0.01 seconds duration destroy 50 bits of data being transmitted at
4800 bps
Noise
Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR)
•
Two cases of SNR: a high SNR and a low SNR
Example
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:
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:
✔ The bandwidth available
▪ High bandwidth, high data rate
✔ The level of the signals we use
▪ More levels high data rate, however reduce the reliability of the receiver.
✔ The quality of the channel (the level of noise)
▪ High SNR high data rate
Noiseless Channel: Nyquist Bit Rate
•
Noiseless Channel: Nyquist Bit Rate
Example: 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

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
Noiseless Channel: Nyquist Bit Rate
Example: We need to send 265 kbps over a noiseless channel with a
bandwidth of 20 kHz. How many signal levels do we need?
Solution
We can use the Nyquist formula as shown:

• Since this result is not a power of 2, we need to either increase the

number of levels or reduce the bit rate. If we have 128 levels, the bit
rate is 280 kbps. If we have 64 levels, the bit rate is 240 kbps.
Noisy Channel: Shannon Capacity
•
Noisy Channel: Shannon Capacity
• We can calculate the theoretical highest bit rate of a regular
telephone line. A telephone line normally has a bandwidth of 3000.
The signal-to-noise ratio is usually 3162. For this channel the
capacity is calculated as

• This means that the highest bit rate for a telephone line is 34.860
kbps. If we want to send data faster than this, we can either
increase the bandwidth of the line or improve the signal-to-noise
ratio.
Example

The values of SNR and SNRdB for a noiseless channel

are

We can never achieve this ratio in real life; it is an ideal.

3.27