Communication Systems

ELEN90057
Semester 2, 2019

 Lecturer:
 Prof. William Shieh
 shiehw@unimelb.edu.au

 Dept. Electrical & Electronic Engineering

 University of Melbourne

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Lectures & Practice Classes
Lectures will be held at these times:

 Tue 11:00 – 12:00, Rivett Th., Redmond Barry-200

 Thu 17:15 – 18:15, Wright Th., Medical-C403
 Fri 14:15 – 15:15, Wright Th., Medical-C403

Practice Class:
 Fri 15:15 – 16:15, Wright Th., Medical-C403.
 Problem sheets will be made available the week before.
- Solutions will be placed on the subject LMS website the
following week

Weekly Consultation Hour

4:15pm – 6:15pm, Fri, room 5.6, EEE
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 Workshops

Workshops (beginning Week 2 or 3), Old Metallurgy Bldg, Rm

EDS7.

 The workshops are to be completed and written up with a workshop

partner. The sheets will be mad available on LMS the week before.
 You & your partner should pick the same workshop session – see SIS
and attend it regularly. If enrolment is large then a few groups of
three will be permitted.
 Attendance is compulsory. Absence without a medical certificate or
other valid reason means an automatic score of 0% for that
workshop, even if a report is submitted.

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Book List
Prescribed Textbook:
 Carlson & Crilly, Communication Systems, 5th ed. A solid,
engineering-oriented introduction to analog & dig. comms that
covers almost all the subject material.

References:
 Lathi & Ding, Modern Digital and Analog Communication
Systems, 4th ed. Very readable, but skips some material.
 Proakis & Salehi, Communication Systems Engineering, 2nd ed.
Covers all the material.
 Also, Haykin & Moher, Introduction to Analog and Digital
Communication , 2nd ed. Readable & well-structured, though it
skips a lot.

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Subject Overview
This subject provides an introduction to the analysis and design of
telecommunication signals and systems. Topics to be covered include:
 Signals & systems revision; channel distortion and delay; low-pass
representations of band-pass signals and systems.
 Analog modulation & demodulation schemes in time- & frequency-domains,
including conventional amplitude modulation (AM), double sideband
suppressed carrier (DSBSC), single sideband (SSB) & frequency modulation
(FM); threshold effects in AM and FM.
 Random process basics; filtering; random processes in frequency domain;
Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) analysis for analog schemes.
 Digital communication basics: Nyquist’s sampling theorem, quantisation;
digital modulation schemes including baseband pulse amplitude modulation
(PAM), amplitude shift keying (ASK) and orthogonal signalling (FSK),
synchronisation, matched filter receivers for additive white Gaussian noise
(AWGN) channels, and bit-error analysis;
 Analog vs. digital schemes in terms of spectral efficiency, transmission
power, demodulated SNR and complexity.

Prerequisites: Probability and Random Models or MAST30020/MAST30001

AND Signals and Systems

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Objectives
The emphasis of this subject is on understanding the
basic concepts that underpin both analog & digital
formats in communications. To pass, you should be
able to
 Qualitatively describe the basic functional blocks of a
communication system;
 Quantitatively analyse the overall performance of
analog and digital communication schemes;
 Assess the relative merits of different modulation&
demodulation techniques, and make design choices
on this basis;
 Use simulation tools to study the behaviour of simple
communication systems.

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Assessment
 70% Final Exam. Hurdle - you must pass the exam to pass overall
 10% One Mid-semester test (TBA)
 20% Five Workshops
- Each Workshop Sheet will be released the week before.
- 1 Workshop will be based on MATLAB/Simulink
- The other 3 will use TIMS (reconfigurable hardware modules).
- The MATLAB/Simulink-based Sheet will involve 1 demonstrated
session, but you may use any available computer with
MATLAB/Simulink to work on it outside this session.
- Some TIMS-based sheets will involve 2 demonstrated sessions over 2
consecutive weeks.
- One report per group should be written up & handed in by the
deadline to your demonstrator’s box in level 4, EE.
- If you don’t physically attend your workshop session(s), you’ll get 0%
for that workshop

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History of Telecommunications

Ancient - Light beams, carrier pigeons, smoke

signals, etc.

Drawbacks: slow, unreliable, limited range.

Industrial revolution, colonial expansions

 Motivation for fast & reliable communication
over long distances.

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Electric & Electromagnetic
Signals
Electrical signals can travel vast
distances at near light speed
over wires.

1st electric telegraph transmission:

Morse, 1838
“Attention, the universe! By
kingdoms, right wheel!”

1820, Oersted: electromagnetism.

1864, Maxwell (pictured) EM field

equations, predicted EM waves
1887 –1907: Popov, Marconi,
Lodge:wireless telegraphy

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Optical Communications

Electrical and electromagnetic communication methods

dominated till 1966.
Kao & Hockham: idea of using total internal reflection to
transmit laser beam a clad glass fibre.
+: Huge bandwidth (more about this later), low
interference.
- : Huge loss per km in light signal strength.
K&H realised that losses in glass were mainly due to
impurities
 Purer glass could improve signal strength by factor
of 10^49

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Sir Charles K. Kao (c. 60’s), the father of fibre-optic comms.
Awarded half of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for
"groundbreaking achievements concerning
the transmission of light in fibers
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Aim of Communications

 Communications = Techniques for transferring

information.
 Information is always delivered by a signal – a time-
varying physical quantity.
 Main objective: fast, accurate & reliable transfer of
signal from source to destination.
 Specific use or meaning of underlying information is
often irrelevant for communications system design.
 However, certain general characteristics - i.e. type of
information – are important for efficient system
design.

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 Analog
Communication System
(Carrier wave)

Information Modulator
Source & Transducer

Physical Channel

Output Transducer Demodulator

(Local Oscillator)

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Digital Communication System

(Carrier)

(Local oscillator)

(from Proakis & Salehi, 2nd ed)

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Common Message Types

 Speech - air forced past vocal chords

in vocal tract  sinusoidal pressure
waves. Typically, significant amplitudes
between 300Hz - 3.1 KHz. Speech
signal is sum of these waves.
 Music – Like speech, but having a
broader frequency band, 50Hz -15KHz.

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Message Types, cont.

 Video - TV camera lens focus a 2D scene

every 0.033s onto photosensitive surface.
- Line-by-line raster-scanning by electron beam
 Current that varies with time.
- Bandwidth of video signal =5MHz in
Australian & W. European PAL standard.
 Data – finite number of possible values
- e.g. 0 or 5V, ‘dot’ or ‘dash’, “a”,…,”z”.
- Bandwidth & data rate of depends on
application, can be GHz.

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Analog “vs” Digital

If signal has values in continuous range – analog

If finite no. possible values – digital

Most modern comms systems have both analog &

digital aspects
 At lower physical level, digital 0’s & 1’s always
represented by analog waveforms, transmitted using
analog modulation.
 Other hand, at an intermediate level, an analog
message may be digitised (A/D conversion) & coded
into a stream of bits.

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Communication Objectives

Basic objective of a comms system: to transmit

message signal from source to destination “reliably”.
Defn. of reliability depends on whether signal is treated
as analog or digital.

E.g. consider a signal s(t) varying between 0-5V.

 If digital, we’d like to distinguish between “highs”
and “lows” with few errors (high accuracy)
 If analog, we’d like to preserve its shape with
minimal distortion (high fidelity)

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Communication Channels

$M Question: How can information be carried

from a source to a distant destination quickly
& reliably?

Telecomms. took off only after discovery of

suitable means of transport: EM waves
travelling through atmosphere or cables.

Channel = medium through which signal is

transmitted.

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Channels, cont.

Basic physical properties of transmitted signal are often

considered part of channel.

 Sonar (sound) & EM waves propagating through

ocean are said to travel via different channels.

 Very low frequency (VLF) & very high freq. (VHF) EM

waves travelling through atmosphere also considered
to travel via different channels.

Reason: effects of physical medium differ significantly

for these signals.

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Channel Properties and
Limitations
 Point-to-point or broadcast?
 Guided or unguided?

 Linear or non-linear?

 Time-varying or time-invariant?

Channel Limitations
 Limited transmission power

 “Nonideal” frequency response 

bandwidth constraint
 Interference and/or noise levels
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Fig. 1.1-3, Carlson and Crilly. Effects of channel frequency response, sinusoidal interference, and
random noise on a digital signal.
Guided Channel Examples

 Twisted pair – 2 copper wires sheathed in PVC.

- Susceptible to EM interference from mutual
inductance, mitigated by twisting (why?).
- Used as a point-to-point link in telephone systems.
- Limited passband, 0.3-3.1KHz
 Coaxial cable – inner conductor surrounded by
dielectric, then an outer cylindrical conductor, then
insulating sheath.
- High immunity to EM interference, due to outer
conductor.
- High impedance taps allow multiple access.
- Higher bandwidth. Used in office local area networks
@ 10Mb/s, also in cable TV systems.
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Guided Channel eg’s, cont

 Optical fibre – inner glass core, outer glass

cladding, then a protective plastic jacket.
- Carries light waves by means of total internal
reflection.
- Immune to EMI.

- Bandwidth 20,000 GHz, low attenuation

(factor of 0.99/ km).
- Small, lightweight, rugged. Used for very high
speed comm.
- Non-linear at high power levels.

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Optical Fibre Transmission

Fig. 3.3-3a, Carlson, Crilly & Rutledge

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Unguided Channel Eg.s
 Fixed wireless channels – EM waves propagating through
atmosphere.
- May be point-to-point (microwave links) or broadcast (TV,
radio).
- Susceptible to EMI and weather (rain).
- Also experiences fading, i.e. destructive interference between
2+ versions of signal that arrive at destination via different
routes  time-varying.
 Mobile wireless channels – EM waves propagating between
moving source and destination.
- Point-point or broadcast.
- Susceptible to EMI, weather and fading (particularly in cities,
due to multiple reflections off buildings)

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Unguided Channel Eg’s, cont.

 Satellite channel – EM wave at 6 GHz transmitted

to satellite (uplink), amplified, retransmitted at 4GHz
(downlink) to any point in line-of-sight.
- Broad area coverage, good for long distance p-p and
broadcast.
- Low sky noise and rain losses.
- Bandwidth 500MHz per satellite typically.
 Note: a channel may be cascade of several channels
& devices, e.g.
- Satellite channel = uplink transponder  downlink.
- Long-distance optical links have amplifiers &
regenerators at regular intervals.

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Satellite Link, cont.

Fig 3.3-5,
Carlson et al

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Fig. 1.2-2,
Carlson & Crilly
 Modulation and Demodulation

Messages are usually transformed in a special way before transmission - Modulation.

Modulation should always be invertible (demodulation). I.e. with no noise or

interference, original message should be recoverable at other end of channel.

Fig. 4.2-3
Carlson et al

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Reasons for Modulation
 Matching with channel by exploiting properties of
channel.
- E.g. optical fibre has low loss around  = 0.9 nm 
shift spectrum so that transmitted signal consists of
wavelengths in that region.
- Equalisation of signal may be required to compensate
for channel distortions.
- Signal may have to be converted into suitable
physical quantity, e.g. sound to voltage (transduced).
 Easy to generate EM waves – Antenna length  .
- Speech signals have spectra down to 100Hz 
Antenna would be 300km long!
- Solution: shift spectrum up by using carrier @ GHz.

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Reasons for Modulation, cont.
 Equipment limitations – Filters & amplifiers often
easier to design or work best within some higher
frequency region. Also, equipment bandwidth usually
<2-10% of nominal operating freq.
 Shift signal spectrum up
 Multiplexing & broadcast – want to transmit more
than 1 signal over same medium
- If spectra overlap, difficult to distinguish.
 Shift message spectra to different locations in freq.
domain, by using carriers with sufficiently different
frequencies.
 Mitigation of noise & interference - Frequency
modulation, digital modulation.

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