ATM Physical layer

Categorized into two parts: Transmission convergence Functions-include header error control, Cell rate decoupling, cell delineation, scrambling. Physical medium Dependent-timing and synchronization, encoding and bit transmission.

ATM physical layer

Transmission Convergence (TC) Sub-Layer The functions of this layer are:- Header error control Cell rate decoupling Cell delineation Cell Scrambling Transmission Frame Adaptation

Header Error Control

The sender computer the checksum over the four bytes and places it in fifth byte. The receiver checks for the error difference. HEC has two modes of operations: Correction mode and detection mode. The error control procedures on the receiver side depends on the mode. In correction mode, The receiver provides for single bit correction

HEC
In detection mode, only error detection is done and all cells with error are discarded.

Cell rate decoupling

If cells are to be transferred over a synchronous physical medium , fixed number of cells have to be transmitted periodically When user doesnt have anything to transfer the dummy cells are used to fill time slots. Inserting idle cells allows rate of outgoing cells to match the link rate.-CRD. Idle cells contain specific bit pattern.

Cell Delineation

Cell Delineation
To identify start and end of cell, TC layer delineates the boundaries of the cells. End of one cell identifies the start of the next. The position of the subsequent cells can be identified. When it is searching for cell boundaries-hunt mode When it finds correct HEC with syndrome matching with fifth byte PRESYNC mode.

Cell Delineation
If HEC of all cells found correct then it moves to SYNCH state. If receiver receives less than ALPHA no. of cells with incorrect HEC it remains in SYNCH state-ensures rare bit error does not effect cell delineation And after ALPHA it again changes to HUNT state.

Cell Scrambling
Mechanism used for security and robustness. Undesired patterns in data is exchanged at source and changes are revert back at the destination.

Transmission Frame Adaptation

The mapping of cells into a framed structure and carried over a network is known as transmission frame adaptation. At destination the cells can be extracted from the structure and delivered to other layers.

Physical Medium dependent(PMD)

1.Timing and Synchronization-In order to correctly receive and interpret bit patterns the timing relationship is to be maintained by receiver and sender. Explicit timing-Both maintain a clock with same frequency. Implicit Timing-alternate mask inversion 2.Encoding and Transmission-Two different voltages or frequencies are used. In fiber optics-Absence and presence of Photons

Physical Layer Standards for ATM

Two main classes of standards:1.PDH-plesiochronous digital hierarchy-two signals occur at nearly same rate-two network elements can make use of two reference clocks-clock time separated by small difference called plesiochronous difference. 2.SDH-digital transitions occur at same ratefollowing a same reference clock known as primary reference clock.

Physical layer standards for ATM

In PDH , there are two ways to carry cells. First is to directly map ATM cells in to payload part , without any regard to frame format Second is to define another framed structure which is then carried in the payload part.