Digital communication in Internet technology
By: Harvinder Kumar
Section: C6803
Roll no: 40
Reg. no: 10804962
Introduction
This application note introduces the
concepts of digital modulation used in
many communications systems today.
Emphasis is placed on explaining the
tradeoffs that are made to optimize
efficiencies in system design.
Most communications systems fall into
one of three categories: bandwidth
efficient, power efficient, or cost
efficient. Bandwidth efficiency
describes the ability of a modulation
scheme to accommodate data within a
limited bandwidth. Power efficiency
describes the ability of the system to
reliably send information at the lowest
practical power level. In most systems,
there is a high priority on bandwidth
efficiency. The parameter to be
optimized depends on the demands of
the particular system, as can be seen in
the following two examples.
For designers of digital terrestrial
microwave radios, their highest priority
is good bandwidth efficiency with low
bit-error-rate. They have plenty of
power available and are not concerned
with power efficiency. They are not
especially concerned with receiver cost
or complexity because they do not have
to build large numbers of them.
On the other hand, designers of hand-
held cellular phones put a high priority
on power efficiency because these
phones need to run on a battery. Cost is
also a high priority because cellular
phones must be low-cost to encourage
more users. Accordingly, these systems
sacrifice some bandwidth efficiency to
get power and cost efficiency.
Every time one of these efficiency
parameters (bandwidth, power, or cost)
is increased, another one decreases,
becomes more complex, or does not
perform well in a poor environment.
Cost is a dominant system priority.
Low-cost radios will always be in
demand. In the past, it was possible to
make a radio low-cost by sacrificing
power and bandwidth efficiency. This is
no longer possible. The radio spectrum
is very valuable and operators who do
not use the spectrum efficiently could
lose their existing licenses or lose out in
the competition for new ones. These are
the tradeoffs that must be considered in
digital RF communications design.
A digital communication system offers
many advantages to the user that cannot
be achieved with an analog system.
Digital communications may make use
of analog link and concepts. A digital
system is a more general case of a
binary system. In binary system, only
two signal values can exist. They are
often called 0 and 1, but these names
specific some voltages.
Digital Communication:
The term data is generally used in
digital communication systems. Data is
any form of information that has been
put into digital form, so that it can be
handled by a digital system. The data
itself is measured as bit. (Bit is a
contraction of the term ‘binary digit’)
The advantages of the binary signals are
easy to generate and process with
digital circuits. These digital circuits are
available in the IC form and can
generate process digital at high speeds.
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Advantages of Digital Digital Communication System
Communication: Disadvantages
1. Increased bandwidth
1. Digital communication is fast and • 64 KB for a 4 KHz channel,
easier. without compression
2. The transmission quality is very high (However, less with
and almost independent of the distance
compression)
among the terminals.
3. We can increase the capacity for 2. Need for precision timing
transmission system. • Bit, character, frame
4. The newer types of transmission synchronization needed
media such as light beams optical fibers 3. Analogue to Digital and Digital to
and wave guides operating in the Analogue conversions
microwave frequency extensively use
• Very often non-linear ADC
digital communication.
5. Consistent communication: Very less and DAC used, some
sensitivity to changes in environmental performance degradation
conditions (temperature and so on.) 4. Higher complexity
6. Then signaling also very easy.
• Clip status, address digits and call Properties about digital
progress information.
communication systems
7. Audio and data integration.
8. Easy dealing out like encryption and • As the received signal
compression. becomes increasingly noisy,
9. Easy system performance whether due to increased
monitoring. distance from the transmitter
• QOS monitoring.
(smaller α) or to increased
10. Incorporation of transmission and noise in the channel (larger
switching. ), the probability the receiver
11. Signal regeneration, operation at makes an error approaches
low SNR, better performance
Integration of services important to . In such situations, the
ISDN. receiver performs only slightly
better than the "receiver" that
12. We can store the messages in longer
ignores what was transmitted
times, without any damages, unlike
paper files which are easily get and merely guesses what bit
damages or attacked by insects. was transmitted.
13. Digital communication possible to Consequently, it becomes
done over large area through internet almost impossible to
and other things. communicate information
14. Digital communication is when digital channels become
comparatively cheaper and the work
noisy.
that needs a lot of people can be done
simply by one person as folders and
other such amenities can be maintained. • As the signal-to-noise ratio
15. It avoids semantic barriers because increases, performance gains--
the written data can be easily changed smaller probability of error
to any other languages by using -- can be easily obtained.
computer language.
16. It provides some advance At a signal-to-noise ratio of 12
advantages like video conferencing that dB, the probability the receiver
save a lot of time, money and effort.

2
 makes an error equals . If you understand the building blocks,
In words, one out of one
hundred million bits will, on
the average, be in error.
• Once the signal-to-noise ratio
exceeds about 5 dB, the error
probability decreases
dramatically. Adding 1 dB
improvement in signal-to-
noise ratio can result in a
factor of 10 smaller . this class is on how \bits" are
• Signal set choice can make a
significant difference in
performance. All BPSK signal
sets, baseband or modulated,
yield the same performance for
the same bit energy. The
BPSK signal set does perform
much better than the FSK
signal set once the signal-to-
noise ratio exceeds about 5 dB.
Applications
• The reasons for the move to digital
modulation;
• How information is modulated onto
in-phase (I)
and quadrature (Q) signals;
• Different types of digital modulation;
• Filtering techniques to conserve
bandwidth;
• Ways of looking at digitally
modulated signals;
• Multiplexing techniques used to share
the
transmission channel;
• How a digital transmitter and receiver
work;
• Measurements on digital RF
communications
systems;
• An overview table with key
specifications for the major digital
communications systems; and
• A glossary of terms used in digital RF
communications.
These concepts form the building
blocks of any communications system.
then you will be able to understand
how any communications system,
present or future, works.
Digital data transmission
Most of us have used communication
devices, either by talking on a
telephone, or browsing the internet on a
computer. This course is about the
mechanisms that allows such
communications to occur. The focus of
transmitted through a communication"
channel.
Communication block diagram.
A digital communications
transmitter
A simplified block diagram of a digital
communications transmitter. It begins
and ends with an analog signal. The
first step is to convert a continuous
analog signal to a discrete digital bit
stream. This is called digitization.
The next step is to add voice coding for
data compression. Then some channel
coding is added. Channel coding
encodes the data in such a way as to
minimize the effects of noise and
interference in the communications
channel. Channel coding adds extra bits
to the input data stream and removes
redundant ones. Those extra bits are
used for error correction or sometimes
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to send training sequences for
identification or equalization. This can
make synchronization (or finding the
symbol clock) easier
for the receiver. The symbol clock
represents the frequency and exact
timing of the transmission of the
individual symbols. At the symbol
clock transitions, the transmitted carrier
is at the correct I/Q (or
magnitude/phase) value to represent a
specific symbol (a specific point in the
constellation). Then
the values (I/Q or magnitude/phase) of
the transmitted carrier are changed to
represent another symbol. The interval
between these two times is the symbol
clock period. The reciprocal of this is
the symbol clock frequency. The
symbol clock phase is correct when the
symbol clock is aligned with the
optimum instant(s) to detect the
symbols.
The next step in the transmitter is
filtering. Filtering
is essential for good bandwidth
efficiency. Without filtering, signals
A digital communications
receiver
The receiver is similar to the transmitter
but in reverse. It is more complex to
design. The incoming
(RF) signal is first down converted to
(IF) and demodulated. The ability to
demodulate the signal is hampered by
factors including atmospheric noise,
competing signals, and multipath or
would have very fast transitions
between states and therefore very wide
frequency spectra—much wider than is
needed for the purpose of sending
information. A single filter is shown for
simplicity, but in reality there are two
filters; one each for the I and Q
channels. This creates a compact and
spectrally efficient signal that can be
placed on a carrier.
The output from the channel coder is
then fed into the modulator. Since there
are independent I and Q components in
the radio, half of the information can be
sent on I and the other half on Q. This is
one reason digital radios work well with
this type of digital signal. The I and Q
components are separate.
The rest of the transmitter looks similar
to a typical RF transmitter or
microwave transmitter/ receiver pair.
The signal is converted up to a higher
intermediate frequency (IF), and then
further up converted to a higher radio
frequency (RF). Any undesirable
signals that were produced by the up
conversion are then filtered out.
fading. Generally, demodulation
involves the following stages:
1. carrier frequency recovery (carrier
lock)
2. symbol clock recovery (symbol lock)
3. signal decomposition to I and Q
components
4. determining I and Q values for each
symbol
(“slicing”)
5. decoding and de-interleaving
6. expansion to original bit stream
7. digital-to-analog conversion, if
required
In more and more systems, however,
the signal
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starts out digital and stays digital. It is
never analog in the sense of a
continuous analog signal like audio.
The main difference between the
transmitter and receiver is the issue of
carrier and clock (or symbol) recovery.
Both the symbol-clock frequency and
phase (or
timing) must be correct in the receiver
in order to
demodulate the bits successfully and
recover the transmitted information. A
symbol clock could be at the right
frequency but at the wrong phase. If the
symbol clock was aligned with the
transitions between symbols rather than
the symbols themselves, demodulation
would be unsuccessful.
Symbol clocks are usually fixed in
frequency and this frequency is
accurately known by both the
transmitter and receiver. The difficulty
is to get them both aligned in phase or
timing. There are a variety of
techniques and most systems employ
two or more. If the signal amplitude
varies during modulation, a receiver can
measure the variations. The transmitter
can send a specific synchronization
signal or a predetermined bit sequence
such as 10101010101010 to “train” the
receiver’s clock. In systems with a
pulsed carrier, the symbol clock can be
aligned with the power turn-on of the
carrier.
In the transmitter, it is known where the
RF carrier and digital data clock are
because they are being generated inside
the transmitter itself. In the receiver
there is not this luxury. The receiver
can approximate where the carrier is but
has no phase or timing symbol clock
information. A difficult task in receiver
design is to create carrier and symbol
clock recovery algorithms. That task
can be made easier by the channel
coding performed in the transmitter.
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Internet technology
The Internet is a global system of
interconnected computer networks that
use the standard Internet Protocol Suite
(TCP/IP) to serve billions of users
worldwide. It is a network of networks
that consists of millions of private,
public, academic, business, and
government networks, of local to global
scope, that are linked by a broad array
of electronic, wireless and optical
networking technologies. The Internet
carries a vast range of information
resources and services, such as the
inter-linked hypertext documents of the
World Wide Web (WWW) and the
infrastructure to support electronic mail.
Most traditional communications media
including telephone, music, film, and
television are reshaped or redefined by
the Internet, giving birth to new
services such as Voice over Internet
Protocol (VoIP) and IPTV. Newspaper,
book and other print publishing are
adapting to Web site technology, or are
reshaped into blogging and web feeds.
The Internet has enabled or accelerated
new forms of human interactions
through instant messaging, Internet
forums, and social networking. Online
shopping has boomed both for major
retail outlets and small artisans and
traders. Business-to-business and
financial services on the Internet affect
supply chains across entire industries.
The origins of the Internet reach back to
research of the 1960s, commissioned by
the United States government in
collaboration with private commercial
interests to build robust, fault-tolerant,
and distributed computer networks. The
funding of a new U.S. backbone by the
National Science Foundation in the
1980s, as well as private funding for
other commercial backbones, led to
worldwide participation in the
development of new networking
technologies, and the merger of many
networks. The commercialization of
what was by the 1990s an international
network resulted in its popularization
and incorporation into virtually every
aspect of modern human life. As of
2009, an estimated quarter of Earth's
population used the services of the
Internet.
The Internet has no centralized
governance in either technological
implementation or policies for access
and usage; each constituent network
sets its own standards. Only the
overreaching definitions of the two
principal name spaces in the Internet,
the Internet Protocol address space and
the Domain Name System, are directed
by a maintainer organization, the
Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers (ICANN). The
technical underpinning and
standardization of the core protocols
(IPv4 and IPv6) is an activity of the
Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF), a non-profit organization of
loosely affiliated international
participants that anyone may associate
with by contributing technical expertise.
Technology
Protocols:- The complex
communications infrastructure of the
Internet consists of its hardware
components and a system of software
layers that control various aspects of the
architecture. While the hardware can
often be used to support other software
systems, it is the design and the
rigorous standardization process of the
software architecture that characterizes
the Internet and provides the foundation
for its scalability and success. The
responsibility for the architectural
design of the Internet software systems
has been delegated to the Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF). The
IETF conducts standard-setting work
groups, open to any individual, about
the various aspects of Internet
architecture. Resulting discussions and
final standards are published in a series
of publications, each called a Request
for Comments (RFC), freely available
6
on the IETF web site. The principal
methods of networking that enable the
Internet are contained in specially
designated RFCs that constitute the
Internet Standards. Other less rigorous
documents are simply informative,
experimental, or historical, or document
the best current practices (BCP) when
implementing Internet technologies.
The Internet Standards describe a
framework known as the Internet
Protocol Suite. This is a model
architecture that divides methods into a
layered system of protocols (RFC 1122,
RFC 1123). The layers correspond to
the environment or scope in which their
services operate. At the top is the
Application Layer, the space for the
application-specific networking
methods used in software applications,
e.g., a web browser program. Below
this top layer, the Transport Layer
connects applications on different hosts
via the network (e.g., client–server
model) with appropriate data exchange
methods. Underlying these layers are
the core networking technologies,
consisting of two layers. The Internet
Layer enables computers to identify and
locate each other via Internet Protocol
(IP) addresses, and allows them to
connect to one-another via intermediate
(transit) networks. Lastly, at the bottom
of the architecture, is a software layer,
the Link Layer, that provides
connectivity between hosts on the same
local network link, such as a local area
network (LAN) or a dial-up connection.
The model, also known as TCP/IP, is
designed to be independent of the
underlying hardware which the model
therefore does not concern itself with in
any detail. Other models have been
developed, such as the Open Systems
Interconnection (OSI) model, but they
are not compatible in the details of
description, nor implementation, but
many similarities exist and the TCP/IP
protocols are usually included in the
discussion of OSI networking.
The most prominent component of the
Internet model is the Internet Protocol
(IP) which provides addressing systems
(IP addresses) for computers on the
Internet. IP enables internetworking and
essentially establishes the Internet itself.
IP Version 4 (IPv4) is the initial version
used on the first generation of the
today's Internet and is still in dominant
use. It was designed to address up to
~4.3 billion (109) Internet hosts.
However, the explosive growth of the
Internet has led to IPv4 address
exhaustion which is estimated to enter
its final stage in approximately 2011. A
new protocol version, IPv6, was
developed in the mid 1990s which
provides vastly larger addressing
capabilities and more efficient routing
of Internet traffic. IPv6 is currently in
commercial deployment phase around
the world and Internet address registries
(RIRs) have begun to urge all resource
managers to plan rapid adoption and
conversion.
IPv6 is not interoperable with IPv4. It
essentially establishes a "parallel"
version of the Internet not directly
accessible with IPv4 software. This
means software upgrades or translator
facilities are necessary for every
networking device that needs to
communicate on the IPv6 Internet.
Most modern computer operating
systems are already converted to
operate with both versions of the
Internet Protocol. Network
infrastructures, however, are still
lagging in this development. Aside
from the complex physical connections
that make up its infrastructure, the
Internet is facilitated by bi- or multi-
lateral commercial contracts (e.g.,
peering agreements), and by technical
specifications or protocols that describe
how to exchange data over the network.
Indeed, the Internet is defined by its
interconnections and routing policies.
Structure:- The Internet structure and
its usage characteristics have been
studied extensively. It has been
determined that both the Internet IP
routing structure and hypertext links of
the World Wide Web are examples of
scale-free networks. Similar to the way
the commercial Internet providers
7
connect via Internet exchange points,
research networks tend to interconnect
into large subnetworks such as
GEANT, GLORIAD, Internet2
(successor of the Abilene Network),
and the UK's national research and
education network JANET. These in
turn are built around smaller networks
(see also the list of academic computer
network organizations).
Many computer scientists describe the
Internet as a "prime example of a large-
scale, highly engineered, yet highly
complex system". The Internet is
extremely heterogeneous; for instance,
data transfer rates and physical
characteristics of connections vary
widely. The Internet exhibits "emergent
phenomena" that depend on its large-
scale organization. For example, data
transfer rates exhibit temporal self-
similarity. The principles of the routing
and addressing methods for traffic in
the Internet reach back to their origins
the 1960s when the eventual scale and
popularity of the network could not be
anticipated. Thus, the possibility of
developing alternative structures is
investigated.
Communication
Electronic mail, or email, is an
important communications service
available on the Internet. The concept
of sending electronic text messages
between parties in a way analogous to
mailing letters or memos predates the
creation of the Internet. Pictures,
documents and other files are sent as
email attachments. Emails can be cc-ed
to multiple email addresses.
Internet telephony is another common
communications service made possible
by the creation of the Internet. VoIP
stands for Voice-over-Internet Protocol,
referring to the protocol that underlies
all Internet communication. The idea
began in the early 1990s with walkie-
talkie-like voice applications for
personal computers. In recent years
many VoIP systems have become as
easy to use and as convenient as a
normal telephone. The benefit is that, as
the Internet carries the voice traffic,
VoIP can be free or cost much less than
a traditional telephone call, especially
over long distances and especially for
those with always-on Internet
connections such as cable or ADSL.
VoIP is maturing into a competitive
alternative to traditional telephone
service. Interoperability between
different providers has improved and
the ability to call or receive a call from
a traditional telephone is available.
Simple, inexpensive VoIP network
adapters are available that eliminate the
need for a personal computer.
Voice quality can still vary from call to
call but is often equal to and can even
exceed that of traditional calls.
Remaining problems for VoIP include
emergency telephone number dialing
and reliability. Currently, a few VoIP
providers provide an emergency
service, but it is not universally
available. Traditional phones are line-
powered and operate during a power
failure; VoIP does not do so without a
backup power source for the phone
equipment and the Internet access
devices. VoIP has also become
increasingly popular for gaming
applications, as a form of
communication between players.
Popular VoIP clients for gaming
include Ventrilo and Teamspeak. Wii,
PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 also offer
VoIP chat features.
Digital communication in
Internet technology
As the adoption rates of the Internet and
broadband connections slow down in
the U.S., latest studies suggest that the
“digital divide” could be solidifying:
those with modest incomes, rural
residents, and minorities are among
those who lag behind in Internet access.
Most people living in developing
regions, who represent an
overwhelming majority of the world’s
8
population, also largely fall on the
“wrong” side of the digital divide.
Bridging this digital divide, especially
by attempting to increase the
accessibility of broadband connectivity,
can be challenging. The improvement
of wide-area Internet bandwidth is
constrained by factors such as how
quickly we can dig ditches to bury
fibers in the ground. The cost of
furnishing “last-mile” wiring can be
prohibitively high, and the progress has
been excruciatingly slow. Satellite-
based solutions have severe cost and
aggregate bandwidth limitations.
In this paper, we explore the use of
digital storage media (such as DVDs,
flash memory devices, or hard disks)
transported by the postal system as a
general digital communication
mechanism. While the idea of sending
digital content via the postal system is
not a new idea—companies (such as
AOL and Netflix) have used this
approach to deliver software and
movies on a large scale, and some
researchers have reported shipping hard
disks filled with astronomy data—none
of these existing attempts have turned
the postal system into a generic
communication channel that can cater
to a wide array of applications. We
shall call such a system a Postmanet.
Compared to traditional wide-area
connectivity options, the
Advantages
• Wide reach. The postal system is a
truly global “network” that reaches a far
greater percentage of the world’s
human population. It is a robust and
proven technology that works well
today; and to use it for digital
communication, one requires no
significant new investment in exotic
equipment.
• Great bandwidth potential. If we
compare the number of bytes that can
be shipped by the Postmanet against
that can be transmitted over the
traditional wide-area Internet in the
time interval of one or a few days, it is a
well known phenomenon today that the
former can be far greater than the latter.
Some may consider this phenomenon a
temporary fluke as a result of the
relatively poor capacity of today’s
Internet. We, however, believe that this
is not the case. Our belief stems from
observing some fundamental
technology trends. Storage density of
flash memory and magnetic disks has
been increasing at the annual rate of
60% to 100% for many years, and it is
likely to continue in the foreseeable
future. Besides flash memory and hard
disks, even the next generation Blu-Ray
DVDs can hold up to 27 GB per disc.
Moreover, one can always ship multiple
units at a time. The amount of
information that can fit in a fixed
amount of volume, or that can be
shipped by the postal system for a fixed
cost increases at an exponential rate,
one that the realizable wide-area
Internet bandwidth growth is unlikely to
be able to keep up with. Indeed, far
from being a temporary fluke, the
bandwidth gap between these two
modes of transport is only expected to
widen as the storage density continues
its rapid improvement.
• Low cost. The goal of providing
citizens with affordable access to postal
service is typically an integral part of
most nations’ postal system charters. In
the U.S., even if each household sends
(and receives) one DVD each day, the
monthly cost of about $10 compares
favorably with existing ISP offerings,
especially if we were to consider its
vast bandwidth potential. The relatively
liberal use of the postal system by AOL
and Netflix highlights the low cost
9
advantage of this approach. This cost
advantage can be more apparent in
certain foreign countries where dialup
lines are charged based on time spent
online and can be much more
expensive. In addition to catering to
“low end” users, the cost advantage of
the postal system relative to that of a
high-speed wide-area network also
holds for corporate “power users”
shipping large amounts of data.
• Good scalability. The postal system is
highly decentralized, and it does not
appear to easily suffer from potential
bottlenecks. It has tried and tested
experience dealing with “flash crowds”
such as those seen during certain
holidays.
We note that our goal is not to compete
against or to replace traditional Internet
access; instead, our goal is to extend
and to complement the Internet.
• Extending the Internet. For those who
have no access to connectivity or high-
bandwidth connectivity, the Postmanet
can provide an inexpensive connectivity
alternative to enable certain networked
applications, especially bandwidth-
intensive ones. The target audience may
not only include rural residents, those
who live in developing regions, and
economically disadvantaged people, but
also other groups of users, such as those
who travel to places lacking
connectivity for business or recreational
purposes.
• Complementing the Internet.
Although the Postmanet can yield
enormous bandwidth, it has long (but
reasonably predictable) latencies, such
as a small number of days. We call such
a channel a High Latency High
Bandwidth (HLHB) channel.
Correspondingly, we call a traditional
Internet connection a Low Latency Low
Band-width (LLLB) channel. For places
with access to both an HLHB channel
and an LLLB channel, an interesting
problem is how to exploit an integrated
and simultaneous use of both channels
to get the best of both worlds. For
example, small requests,
acknowledgements, “NAKs,” and
control messages may be sent along the
LLLB Internet, while large messages
are staged on mobile storage devices for
transmission by the HLHB Postmanet.
Another example of the complementary
nature of the Postmanet is that it may
increase the availability of the
communication subsystem: if the
Internet is down for some reason, one
still has another alternative.
Summary
Communication system design requires
the simultaneous conservation of
bandwidth, power, and
cost. In the past, it was possible to make
a radio low cost by sacrificing
parameters such as power and
bandwidth efficiency.
This application note has presented the
building blocks of any communications
system. With these concepts, you will
be able to understand how
communications systems work, and
make more informed decisions
regarding the tradeoffs required to
optimize your system.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I feel immense pleasure to give the
credit of my project work not only to
one individual as this work is integrated
10
effort of all those who concerned with
it. I want to owe my thanks to all those
individuals who guided me to move on
the track.
I would like to thank, Mr. Ravi Sankar,
Lecturer in Digital Communication
System, Lovely Professional
University, for giving me an
opportunity to prove my worthiness in
this project. He always proved as an
excellent Literature guide & without his
guidance this term paper would not
have been successful. I have seen in his
an exceptional leader and will try to
follow and implement some of the
techniques I have learned from him in
my professional life.
.

References

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
2. http://www.answers.com/topic
/digital-communications
3. http://www.managementstudy
guide.com/digital-
communication-system.htm
4. www.Scribd.Com
5. www.docs.google.com
6. www.1000 projects.com

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