Comp 372

Data Communication and

Computer Networks

Credits: 4 (3 Lecture + 1 Lab)

Instructor: Berhane Wolde-Gabriel
Chapter 1- Concepts of Data
Communications
 1.1 - Introduction
• Benefits of Networking in Business:
– Share resources (E.g. Printer, data)
– Communication (E.g. e-mail, internal networks)
– Share Internet access
– Integrate business (including sales activity, stock holding,
quotations, ordering raw materials, control the production
process, process invoices, process all the accounts, analyze
business performance, quality control, etc).
• Benefits of Networking in Scientific Applications:
– Share data
– Use remote powerful computers to carry complex
computations
 1.2 - Components of Data Communications

• Data communication - transfer of data or information

between a source and a receiver
• Data communications is concerned with:
– Transfer of data
– Method of transfer
– Preservation of data
• Functionally, it consists of:
– Message
– Sender
– Receiver
– Medium
– Protocol
 1.2 - Components of Data Communications
(Cont’d)

• Effectiveness of Data Communication System

depends on:
– Delivery
– Accuracy
– Timeliness
 1.3 – Analog and Digital Signals

• Analog signal – varies continuously over continuous

time
• Digital signal – varies in steps over discrete intervals of
time
Intensity Intensity

Time Time

Fig. 1.1(a) - Analog Signal Fig. 1.1(b) - Digital Signal

1.3 – Analog and Digital Signals (Cont’d)

• Digital signals are

less affected by
noise
• Analog signal is
converted to digital
signal in three
steps:
– Sampling
– Quasntizing
– Encoding
 1.4 – Time and Frequency Domain

• Signals may be periodic or non-periodic

• Signals may be represented in time or frequency domain.

• Figure below shows frequency domain representation of the
sine wave
Ampli
tude

f0 Frequency

Fig. 1.6 – Frequency domain representation of the

Sinusoidal signal
 1.4 – Time and Frequency Domain (Cont’d)

• Any periodic signal can be decomposed into a

sum of sinusoidal signals using a Fourier series
expansion.
• Fundamental frequency vs harmonics

(d) Frequency domain representation

1.4 – Time and Frequency Domain (Cont’d)

• Non-periodic signals can be represented in the

frequency domain as a continuous spectrum of
frequency components, using Fourier Transform
 1.5 – Data Rate and Bandwidth
• Digital signal – infinite 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0
Pulses before transmission:
bandwidth Bit rate: 2000 bits per second

• Transmission medium Pulses after transmission:

– finite bandwidth Bandwidth: 500 Hz

• Result: Distortion Bandwidth: 900 Hz

• The more limited the
bandwidth, the greater Bandwidth: 1300 Hz
the distortion
• The grater the Bandwidth: 1700 Hz
bandwidth of a
transmission system, Bandwidth: 2500 Hz
the higher is the data
rate that can be Bandwidth: 4000 Hz
transmitted
 Signal Attenuation/Amplification

• A communication system may be represented with a

block diagram:

• Amplification / attenuation is expressed in decibel (NdB):

 Pout 
N dB  10. log  
 Pin 

• If Pin = 10 watts and Pout = 100 watts, then:

N dB 10. log 100 10  10dB

Signal Attenuation/Amplification (Cont’d)
• Effective gain/loss of a communication system
involving several media is the sum of each
gain/loss :

N dB  10  7  10  3  10dB  Pout  10Pin

• The decibel is also expressed in terms of

the ratio of the voltage, i.e :
N dB  10 log  out   20 log  out 
P V
 Pin   Vin 
1.6 – Analog and Digital Data Transmission
• Data - entity that conveys meaning
• signal - the electric/electromagnetic encoding
(representation) of the data
• Transmission - communication of data by the
propagation and processing of signals
• In analog transmission, signals are transmitted without
regard to content (E.g. attenuated signal is amplified and
retransmitted)
• In digital transmission, the content of message could
be interpreted to aid in faithful transmission (E.g. data
encoded in attenuated signal is recovered, a new signal
is generated by encoding the recovered data and then
retransmitted)
Analog and Digital Data Transmission (Cont’d)
(a) Data and Signals
Analog Signal Digital Signal
Analog  Signal in the same  Analog data are encoded
Data spectrum as the using a codec to produce
analog data, or a digital bit stream
 Analog data are
encoded to occupy a
different portion of
spectrum
Digital  Digital data are  Digital data are encoded
Data encoded using a to produce a digital
modem to produce signal with desired
analog signal. properties.
Analog and Digital Data Transmission (Cont’d)

(b) Treatment of Signals

Analog Transmission Digital Transmission
Analog Signal is propagated Signal is propagated
Signal through amplifiers through repeaters

Digital Not used Signal is propagated

Signal through repeaters
1.7 – Transmission Impairments
• Transmission impairments: attenuation,
delay distortion, and noise
• Attenuation - reduction of the amplitude of
an electrical signal - logarithmic in nature
• Three considerations with attenuation:
– Received signal must have sufficient strength
– Signal must maintain sufficiently higher level
than noise
– It is an increasing function of frequency 
distortion
Transmission Impairments (Cont’d)
• Delay distortion, peculiar to guided media, is
caused by the variation of velocity with
frequency
• For a bandlimited signal, the velocity tends to be
highest near the center frequency and lower
toward the two edges of the band  delay
distotion
• In digital data transmission, bit position will spill
over into other bit positions  inter-symbol
interference. Equalizing techniques can be used
for delay distortion.
 Transmission Impairments (Cont’d)
• Noise - undesired signals that are inserted during
transmission
• Thermal noise (white noise) - due to thermal agitation of
electrons; covers wide frequency
• Inter-modulation noise - sum or difference or multiple
of original frequencies of signals at different frequencies
that share the same transmission medium
• Crosstalk - due to electric coupling between nearby
twisted pairs
• Impulse noise - irregular pulses or noise spikes of short
duration and high amplitudes. (May be caused by
lightning or flaws in communications system. )
 1.8 – Channel Capacity
• Nyquist Theorem
– s  2B samples per second
• M quantization levels requires log2M bits;
thus, C = 2Blog2M
• Pulse Code Modulation (PCM)
– Given B = 4000Hz & M=256, C= 64Kb/s)
• Signal to noise ratio (SNR) tells how much
a signal has been corrupted by noise
• C=B*log2(1+SNR), where SNR=S/N
– SNR is usually expressed in decibels
1.9 – Data Representation
• Text - represented as a bit pattern, a sequence
of bits or codes (0’s and 1’s). ASCII (7 bits) and
Unicode (16 or 32 bits)
• Numbers – also bit patterns; binary number
system
• Images - matrix of pixels (picture elements),
where each pixel is a small dot and each pixel is
assigned bit patterns:
– 1 bit – black and white
– Gray scale with several bits
– RGB (Red, Green Blue) or YCM (Yellow, Cyan,
Magneta) gray scales for color images
Data Representation (Cont’d)

• Audio – Analog signal and is digitized

before being represented in computers
• Video - either produced as a continuous
entity (e.g., by a TV camera), or it can be a
combination of images, each a discrete
entity, arranged to convey the idea of
motion.
1.10 – Types of Data Flow and Transmission
• Communication can take different modes:
– Simplex – Unidirectional (transmit or receive)
– Half-duplex – Transmit and receive, but not at the
same time
– Full-duplex – Transmit and receive at the same time
• Two options for transmission
– Parallel – 8-bits (1 byte) transmitted at a time
– Serial – one bit transmitted at a time. The least
significant bit (LSB) is usually transmitted first
MSB LSB

0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0
0 0 0
Types of Data Flow and Transmission (Cont’d)

• Transmission speed expressed in number of bits

transferred in one second. Units include:
• bits per second (bps)
• kilobits per second (kbps) = 1000bps
• megabits per second (Mbps) = 1000 kbps
• gigabits per second (Gbps) = 1000 Mbps
• Two different methods of serial transmission:
– Asynchronous transmission - source and destination
clocks are free running and not locked to each other.
• Short characters of 7 to 8 bit data are sent one at a time
framed by a start bit and 1 or 2 stop bits. It is used for low
data transfer rates, usually 128 kbps or less and short bursts
of data.
Types of Data Flow and Transmission (Cont’d)

– Synchronous Transmission – sends packets

of characters at a time.
• Start and end frames, with special bit patterns,
indicate start and end of packets of characters,
respectively.

• Synchronous transmission is more efficient as

only 4 bytes (3 Start Framing bytes and 1 Stop
Framing byte) are required to transmit up to 64
kbits (8 kB). But, it is more difficult and
expensive to implement.
 Types of Data Flow and Transmission
(Cont’d)

• Compare an 8K Byte data transmission using

Asynchronous transmission and Synchronous
Transmission.
• Asynchronous: Add 3 bits (1 Start and 2 Stop bits) for
every byte transmitted.
– 64 kbits + 24 kbits = total of 88 kbits transmitted
– Efficiency = 64/88*100% = 73%
• Synchronous: Add 4 bytes (32 bits) for the complete 8K
byte data packet.
– 64 kbits + 32 bits = total of 64.032 kbits transmitted
– Efficiency = 64/64.032*100% = 99.9%
 1.11 – Signal Encoding
•Encoding – a process whereby data are converted
into electrical signals to be transmitted over
communication system
–Purpose: to optimize use of the transmission medium

•Digital Signaling: Data (Analog, Digital)  Digital Signal

• Analog Signaling: Data (Analog or Digital)  Analog Signal

 Digital Data, Digital Signal
• Encoding schemes may be used to improve the
performance of signal interpretation
– Signal Spectrum: Lack of high-frequency components
 less bandwidth is required; no DC component 
a.c. coupling is possible (excellent electrical isolation)
– Clocking: separate clock or suitable encoding
– Error Detection: error-detection capability may be built
into the signaling scheme
– Noise Immunity: Some codes perform better than
others in the presence of noise
– Cost and Complexity: the higher the signaling rate to
achieve a given data rate, the greater the cost
Encoding Schemes

Negative voltage – 1; positive voltage 0, or vice-versa.

Generally used by terminals and other devices.

A transition at the beginning of a bit time denotes a 1; no

transition - 0. More reliable in the presence of noise. With
a complex transmission layout, it is easy to lose the sense
of the polarity of the signal.

Alternate Mark Inversion. 0 = no line signal, and 1 = positive

or negative pulse. 1 pulses must alternate in polarity.
Advantages: no loss of synchronization for a long string of
1’s, no DC component, simple means of error detection

Same as bipolar-AMI, except representation of 0 and 1 is

interchanged .
Mid-bit transition serves as a clocking mechanism and
also as data: a low-to high transition represents a 1, and a
high-to-low transition represents a 0. .

Has the added advantage of employing differential

encoding. The mid-bit transition is used only to provide
clocking.
 Digital Data, Analog Signal
Amplitude Shift Keying

 A cos(2f ct ) bin 1
s(t )  
0 bin 0

Frequency Shift Keying

 A cos(2f1t ) bin 1
s(t )  
 A cos(2f 2t ) bin 0

Phase Shift Keying

Analog Data, Digital Signal
 Analog Data, Analog Signals

Amplitude Modulation (AM)

Amplitude of the carrier signal
varied in accordance with the
information bearing signal.

Frequency Modulation (FM)

Frequency of the carrier is varied
in accordance with the modulating
signal.

Phase Modulation (PM)

Phase of the carrier is varied in
accordance with the modulating
signal.