Physical Layer

Line coding Schemes

These slides are partially based on slides assembled by B. A. Forouzan, with grateful acknowledgement of the many others who made their course materials freely available online.
 Line coding

Outline Block coding

Scrambling
DIGITAL-TO-
DIGITAL
CONVERSION
•How we can represent digital
data by using digital signals?
•The conversion involves three
techniques:
• Line coding
• Block coding
• Scrambling

•Line coding is always needed;

block coding and scrambling may
or may not be needed.
Line coding and Decoding
Signal element
Vs Data element
•Data Element:- It is the
smallest entity that can
represent a piece of
information

•Signal Element:- It refers the

shortest unit of digital signal
 Data rate Vs Signal rate
Data Rate:- It is the number of data elements sent per second.
Data rate is also called as bit rate and represented in bps.

Signal Rate:- It refers the number of signal element sent per second.
Signal rate is also known as pulse rate or baud rate and represented
in baud.
Signal Rate (S)=
Average Signal Rate ()=

where c= Case factor

 Question

A signal is carrying data in which one data element is encoded as

one signal element ( r = 1). If the bit rate is 100 kbps, what is the
average value of the baud rate if c is between 0 and 1?

Solution
Assuming that the average value of c is 1/2 . The baud rate is
then
 Signal Transmission Issues

Effect of lack of synchronization

DC Components:- When the voltage level in
a digital signal is constant for a while, the
spectrum creates very low frequencies. These
frequencies around zero, called DC (direct-
current) components
Self-Synchronization-: To correctly interpret
the signals received from the sender, the
receiver's bit intervals must correspond exactly
to the sender's bit intervals.

If the receiver clock is faster or slower, the bit

intervals are not matched and the receiver might
misinterpret the signals.
The sender sends 10110001, while the
receiver receives 110111000011
 Question

In a digital transmission, the receiver clock is 0.1 percent faster than the
sender clock. How many extra bits per second does the receiver receive if the
data rate is
1 kbps? How many if the data rate is 1 Mbps?
Solution
At 1 kbps, the receiver receives 1001 bps instead of 1000
bps.

At 1 Mbps, the receiver receives 1,001,000 bps instead of 1,000,000

bps.
 Line coding schemes
Line coding:- It is the process of converting digital data to digital signals
 Unipolar NRZ scheme
Unipolar :-All signal levels are one side of time axis either below or above.
NRZ – Non- Return to Zero

Unipolar NRZ scheme is very

costly.
 Polar NRZ-L and NRZ-I schemes
Polar :- Signal levels are on both side of time axis.

 In NRZ-L the level of the voltage

determines the value of the bit.

 In NRZ-I the inversion

or the lack of inversion
determines the value of the bit.

 NRZ-L and NRZ-I both have a DC

component problem
 Polar RZ scheme

Polar RZ:- Return-to-zero (RZ) scheme uses three values: positive, negative, and zero.
• In RZ, the signal changes not between bits but during the bit also.

• No DC component problem.
• It occupies greater bandwidth.
• Complexity: RZ uses three levels of
voltage, which is more complex to
create and discern.
Polar Biphase: Manchester and
differential Manchester schemes
 The idea of RZ (transition at the middle
of the bit) and the idea of NRZ-L are
combined into the Manchester scheme.

 In Manchester encoding, the duration of

the bit is divided into two halves.

 Differential Manchester, on the other

hand, combines the ideas of RZ and NRZ-
I.
 In both the encodings, the transition at the
middle of the bit is used for
synchronization
Bipolar schemes
• In bipolar encoding, Three levels are used: positive, zero, and negative.
• Two schemes: - AMI (Alternate Mark Inversion) and Pseudoternary

 No DC component.
 Commonly used for long-
distance communication
 Synchronization problem
when a long sequence of 0s
is present in the data.
 The desire to increase the data speed or
decrease the required bandwidth has resulted
Multilevel in the creation of many schemes. The goal is to
schemes increase the number of bits per baud by
encoding a pattern of m data elements into a
pattern of n signal elements.
Types of Multilevel scheme
In mBnL schemes, a pattern of m data elements  2B1Q scheme
is encoded as a pattern of n signal elements in  8B6T scheme
which 2m ≤ Ln.  4D-PAM5 scheme
Multilevel: • 2BIQ:- Two binary, one quaternary
• It uses data patterns of size 2 and encodes the
2B1Q scheme 2-bit patterns as one signal element belonging
to a four-level signal.
 Multilevel: 8B6T scheme

• 8B6T - Eight binary, Six ternary

• Encode a pattern of 8 bits as a pattern of 6 signal elements, where the signal has three
levels (ternary).
• Each signal pattern has a weight of 0 or +1.
• To make the whole stream DC-balanced, the sender keeps track of the weight. If two
groups of weight 1 are encountered one after another, the first one is sent as is, while
the next one is totally inverted to give a weight of -1.
 Multilevel: 4D-PAM5 scheme

 4D-PAM5 – Four dimensional five-level pulse amplitude modulation

 The 4D means that data is sent over four wires at the same time.
 It uses five voltage levels, such as -2, -1, 0, 1, and 2.
Multi-transition
•MLT-3 scheme (Multi level Transmit)
• NRZ-I and differential Manchester uses two transition
rules to encode binary data (no inversion, inversion).
• This line coding scheme uses three level (+v, 0, and - V)
and three transition rules to move between the levels.

•1. If the next bit is 0, there is no transition.

•2. If the next bit is 1 and the current level is not 0, the next
level is 0.
•3. If the next bit is 1 and the current level is 0, the next level
is the opposite of the last nonzero level.
Multi-
transition:
MLT-3
scheme
Physical Layer
Block Coding &
Scrambling
  We need redundancy to ensure synchronization and to
provide some kind of inherent error detecting.
 Block coding is used to provide redundancy and
Block coding improve the performance of line coding.
 In general, block coding changes a block of m bits
into a block of n bits, where n is larger than m.

Block coding is normally referred to as mB/nB coding; it replaces each m-bit

group with an n-bit group.

Block coding Types:-

• 4B/5B
• 8B/10B
 Block coding concept
•Block coding normally involves three steps:
division, substitution, and combination.
•In the division step, a sequence of bits is
divided into groups of m bits. For example, in
4B/5B encoding, the original bit sequence is
divided into 4-bit groups.
•In substitution step, we substitute an m-bit
group for an n-bit group. For example, in 4B/5B
encoding we substitute a 4-bit code for a 5-bit
group.
•In combination step, the n-bit groups are
combined together to form a stream. The new
stream has more bits than the original bits.
 • The 4B/5B coding scheme was designed to be
used in combination with NRZ-I.
• NRZ-I has a good signal rate, one-half that of
the bi-phase, but it has a synchronization
4B/5B coding Scheme problem.
• A long sequence of 0s can make the receiver
clock lose synchronization. One solution is to
change the bit stream, prior to encoding with
NRZ-I, so that it does not have a long stream of
0s.
Using block coding 4B/5B with NRZ-I line coding scheme

• The block-coded stream does not have more that three consecutive 0s.
• At the receiver, the NRZ-I encoded digital signal is first decoded into a stream
of bits and then decoded to remove the redundancy
4B/5B mapping codes
Substitution in 4B/5B block coding
8B/10B block encoding • The most five significant bits of a 10-bit
block is fed into the 5B/6B encoder; the
least 3 significant bits is fed into a 3B/4B
encoder.
• The split is done to simplify the mapping
table.
• Disparity controller:-To prevent a long
run of consecutive 0s or 1s, the code
uses a disparity controller which keeps
track of excess 0s over 1s (or 1s over
0s).
• The coding has 2^10 – 2^8 =768
redundant groups that can be used for
disparity checking and error detection.
• It has better built-in error-checking
capability and better synchronization as
compared to 4B/5B scheme.
 AMI used with scrambling
• A technique that does not increase the number
of bits and does provide synchronization is
desired.
• Scrambling technique substitutes long zero-level
pulses with a combination of other levels to
provide synchronization.
• Scrambling, as opposed to block coding, is done
at the same time as encoding. The system needs
to insert the required pulses based on the
defined scrambling rules.
• Two common scrambling techniques are
• 1) B8ZS 2) HDB3
Two cases of B8ZS scrambling technique

 B8ZS substitutes eight consecutive zeros with 000VB0VB

Different situations
in HDB3 scrambling
technique
•HDB3 substitutes four
consecutive zeros with 000V or
B00V depending on the
number of nonzero pulses after
the last substitution