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Course information
Introduction
Scope of the course

EE-411
Digital Communications

Digital Communication Systems

Practical information
Course material
Grading policy

FALL 2016

Introduction to digital communication systems

Lecture 1

Introduction

Scope of the course

Communication is a process by which information is
exchanged between two or more individuals through a
common system of symbols, signs or behavior.

MS (Electrical Engineering)
BS (Electrical Engineering)
Research areas: computational electromagnetics,
antenna design for communication devices,
Preferable mode of communication is Email
Email: iftikhar.ahmed@hitecuni.edu.pk
Office # 10, Department of Electrical Engineering
Office Hours:

Communication systems are reliable, economical and

efficient means of communications
Public switched telephone network (PSTN), mobile telephone
communication (GSM, 3G, 4G,) television, navigation
systems,

Tuesday (10:30AM to 12:30PM)

Wednesday (10:30AM to 12:30PM)

This course is aiming at introducing fundamental issues

required for understanding and designing a (digital)
communication system
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Scope of the course

Scope of the course

General structure of a communication system

Example of a (digital) communication system:

Cellular wireless communication system (UMTS)
Signal
transformations
from source to
transmitter
Transmitter and receiver blocks are reciprocal
Signal
transformations
from receiver
to user or sink
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What is a modem?

The modulate and demodulate blocks are altogether

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called modem

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Scope of the course

Practical information

Learning fundamental issues in designing a digital

communication system (DCM)

Course material
Course text book:

Utilized techniques

Digital communications: Fundamentals and Applications by

Bernard Sklar, Prentice Hall, 2011

Formatting and source coding

Modulation (Baseband and bandpass)
Channel coding
Equalization
Synchronization

Reference books:
Digital modulation techniques by Fuqin
Communication systems engineering by John G. Proakis,
Prentice Hall, 2002

Material accessible from course Google drive folder:

Will be discussed during the semester in detail

http://bit.ly/2d4gzGL
Lecture slides (will be uploaded after the lecture)
Reading material
Assignments
Lab manuals (will be provided in lab and uploaded at the end
of week)

Practical information

Today, we are going to talk about:

Grading policy (is subject to change)

Why digital instead of analog?

Block diagram of a DCS
What do we need to know before taking off
towards designing a DCS?

Theory

Quiz/Assignment 10%
Sessional I 20%
Sessional II 20%
Final 50%

Classification of signals
Spectral densities

Lab

Energy spectral density (ESD)

Power spectral density (PSD)

Lab performance 25%

Lab report 25%
Viva I 20%
Viva II 30%

Digital vs. analog

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Digital vs. analog

Advantages of digital communications:

Regeneration of signals

Different kinds of digital signals are treated identically

Signal is degraded as it travels through the

transmission medium

Voice

A bit is a bit!

Data
Media
Some signal Degraded
Amplification to
distortion
signal
Signal is badly degraded
regenerate pulse

Compare the process of regeneration with an analog

signal (For example: a sinusoidal)
Digital signals are easy to regenerate as compared to
analog signals.

Why a signal is degraded?

Reason 1: Due to non-ideal behavior of transmission medium
and circuits (non-ideal frequency response)
Reason 2: Due to unwanted electrical noise and interference
What is the difference between noise and interference?

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Block diagram of a DCS

Block diagram of a DCS

Purpose: conversion of signal/information to binary digits (bits)

Bits are formed in groups to form symbols
Each symbol is regarded as a member of a set containing M symbols
(# ) = 2(# )
Data/Bit Rate Rb? Symbol rate Rs?
The signals are called M-ary symbols
Symbols are represented in form of 1/0. For binary or 2-ary symbols,
M = 2 and k = 1
Example: In 8-ary symbols, how many bits are there in one symbol?
Usually uses Grey coding. (Alternate symbols have only 1 bit change)
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Block diagram of a DCS

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Block diagram of a DCS

Purpose: Reduce data size, compression

Removes (naturally occurring) redundant bits to
reduce the data size
Block codes
Predictive codes
Lossless compression
Lossy compression
Example: A series of 7 0s can be replaced by 4 0s

Purpose: Security
A technique to secure your data
Provides privacy
Prevents unauthorized users from understanding messages and
injecting false messages
What could be the simplest encryption coding scheme?
Watch movie The Imitation Game based on an encryption
scheme ENIGMA used by Germans in WW2 for their
communications.
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Block diagram of a DCS

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Block diagram of a DCS

Purpose: Adds extra information (redundant bits) to make the system more
prone to noise, interference and other channel impairments
Previously discussed that channel introduces noise which results in probability of
false detection (when transmitted bit is 0 but received/detected/decided bit is 1)
Transforms signal symbols (in form of 1s ,0s) of bits K to channel symbols of bits N
where N is always greater than K
Example:
Hoffmann (7,4) code
Transforms a 4 bit source symbol to a 7 bit channel symbol
Channel codes are generated using specific algorithms
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Purpose: Combine data of different users

Enables to transmit data from multiple users to send at the
same time

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Block diagram of a DCS

Block diagram of a DCS

Why do we need modulation?

Purpose: Conversion of bits to a waveform that is represented by some voltage levels

Resulting waveform is called pulse-code-modulation (PCM) waveform
Also known as baseband modulation, waveforms are called line codes
Baseband refers to a signal whose spectrum extends from dc (or near) to some finite
value
Examples:

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Purpose: Conversion of low frequency signal to high frequency signal

The term bandpass indicates that the baseband waveform is frequency translated to
by a carrier wave to a frequency that is much larger than the spectral content of

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End of Lecture 1

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