BENG4

DIGITAL COMMUNICATION
Performance of digital communications systems when disturbed by Additive White Gaussian Noise
(AWGN)
Bit error rate
A measure of the transmission quality of a system is the number of bits received in error as a
proportion of the total number of bits transmitted. This is normally measured over a specified period
of time, for example, a 1 hour (routine test), or 24 hour test which may be done for new installations.
BER

Number of errored bi ts
Total number of bits received

Since digital systems may carry information at different bit rates, this provides a fair measure of
comparison between systems.
Example: If a system has two errored bits in 500 x 103 received, then the BER is 4 x 10-6.
This is a measured quantity. How do we know whether our measurement is within the design
parameters of the system under test?
The theoretical expectation of the BER for a given system, known as the probability of error, P(e), is
a function of the carrier-to-noise power ratio of the system, however since the number of encoding
conditions of the carrier (bits/Hz) varies depending on the type of modulation used, a more specific
Eb
ratio is the energy per bit-to-noise power density ratio, denoted
.
N0
There are two primary causes for error performance degradation in digital transmission systems. The
first is the effect of bandwidth limitations of the transmitter, transmission channel and the receiver
which causes symbol smearing or inter-symbol interference.
Inter-symbol interference (ISI)
The transmission channel is always band-limited. A band-limited channel spreads a pulse waveform
passing through it (example shown below).
Pulse spreading caused by limited bandwidth.
When the channel bandwidth is much greater than the bandwidth of the pulse, the spreading of the
pulse waveform will be slight. When the channel bandwidth is close to the signal bandwidth, the
spreading will exceed the symbol duration (T) and cause the signal pulses to overlap. This
overlapping is called inter-symbol interference (ISI). Like any other source of interference, ISI causes
degradation in the system performance (i.e. higher error rates). It is a particularly insidious type of
degradation because increasing the signal power does nothing to reduce the errors caused by it.
ISI may be reduced through the use of pulse shaping techniques. Nyquist investigated the problem of
specifying a received pulse shape so that no ISI occurs at the detector in the receiver. He showed that
the theoretical minimum system bandwidth needed in order to detect R symbols/sec, without ISI, is
R/2 Hz; in other words a transmission system with bandwidth W Hz can support a transmission rate
of 2W symbols/second (Nyquist bandwidth constraint) without ISI.
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BENG4
DIGITAL COMMUNICATION
Performance of digital communications systems when disturbed by Additive White Gaussian Noise
(AWGN)
Bandwidth efficiency
A fundamental parameter for digital communication systems is bandwidth efficiency, R/W, whose
units are bits/sec/Hz. As the units imply, R/W represents a measure of data throughput per Hz of
channel bandwidth, and thus measures how efficiently any signaling technique (baseband or
bandpass) utilizes the bandwidth resource.
Since the Nyquist bandwidth constraint dictates that the theoretical maximum symbol rate without ISI
is 2 symbols/sec/Hz, we might be led to ask what it says about the maximum number of bits/sec/Hz.
The constraint deals only with symbols and the ability to detect their values without distortion from
other pulses. To find the R/W for any modulation scheme, one must know how many bits each
symbol represents. Consider then a 16 PAM modulation scheme; each symbol is represented by one
of 16 possible amplitudes which comprises 4 bits/symbol. Thus the theoretical maximum bandwidth
efficiency for 16 ary PAM is 8 bits/sec/Hz. Note this is for baseband modulation
Energy per bit to Noise Power Density ratio
The second type of degradation is as a result of noise introduced by a variety of sources. With proper
precautions much of the noise entering the receiver can be reduced or even eliminated, however the
one type of noise that cannot be eliminated is thermal noise. It is also the most easily predicted type
of noise and hence the general assumption can be made that this is the main noise affecting the
system.
The primary spectral characteristic of thermal noise is that its power spectral density is the same for
all frequencies of interest in communication systems, i.e. from d.c. to about 1012 Hz. Therefore we
may assume that a thermal noise source emits an equal amount of noise per unit bandwidth (1 Hz).
When the noise power has a uniform spectral density we refer to it as white noise (in the same sense
as white light). Since thermal noise is a purely random process, its samples are uncorrelated and it is
modeled as a Gaussian process. Finally since thermal noise is superimposed, or added, to the signal it
is referred to as Additive White Gaussian Noise, or AWGN for short.
Zero-mean Gaussian noise is characterized by its variance, hence this noise model is particularly
simple to use for calculations in a digital communication system.
Given:
N kTB watts, where T = ambient temperature in Kelvin, B = Signal bandwidth in Hertz, and k =

Boltzmans constant (1.38 x 10-23 JK-1)

The noise power density, N0 , is the thermal noise power normalized to a 1 Hz bandwidth, i.e.
N0

kTB
kT watts/Hz
B

The bit energy, Eb, is simply the energy contained in one bit of information.
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BENG4
DIGITAL COMMUNICATION
Performance of digital communications systems when disturbed by Additive White Gaussian Noise
(AWGN)
E b Pcarrier Tb

Tb

1
Rb

Thus Eb

where Pcarrier = carrier power (Watts)

Tb = bit duration (seconds)

where Rb = bit rate in bits/sec

C
joules where C is the carrier power
Rb

Eb STb SRb

N
N0 N
W
W
To emphasize; Eb/N0 is just a version of the Signal-to-Noise ratio normalized by bandwidth and bit
rate.
Eb
S W

N0 N R

Example: For a QPSK system with the parameters given below, calculate the noise power density in
dBm, energy per bit in dBJ and Eb/N0
C
= 10-13 W
Rb
= 30kbps
Bandwidth
= 60kHz
Noise, N
= 6.0 x 10-17 W

Error performance for binary systems

As mentioned previously, we seek to estimate the actual error performance of a digital
communication system based on the signal to noise ratio at the receiver.
Probability of error, P(e)
We shall now consider the detection of digital symbols in the presence of AWGN. The probability of
the detector making an incorrect decision is termed the probability of symbol error (Pe). For binary
modulation this will be the same as the probability of bit error (Pb).

(1) Coherently detected BPSK

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BENG4
DIGITAL COMMUNICATION
Performance of digital communications systems when disturbed by Additive White Gaussian Noise
(AWGN)

2Eb
N0

Pb Q

(2) Coherently detected Binary FSK

Eb
N0

Pb Q

(3) ASK and non coherently detected FSK

Pe

1
erfc
2

1
z
2

A2
N0Bp

(4) For other formulae see the general handout

(5) Note that there are two forms of the complementary error function tables, Q(x) and erfc(x)
related as follows:
Q x

erfc
2