telecommunication Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...

, intersymbol interference (ISI) is a form of

distortion In signal processing, distortion is the alteration of the original shape (or other characteristic) of a signal. In communications and electronics it means the alteration of the waveform of an information-bearing signal, such as an audio signal ...

of a

signal In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...

in which one

symbol A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...

interferes with subsequent symbols. This is an unwanted phenomenon as the previous symbols have a similar effect as

noise Noise is unwanted sound considered unpleasant, loud or disruptive to hearing. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference arise ...

, thus making the communication less reliable. The spreading of the pulse beyond its allotted time interval causes it to interfere with neighboring pulses. ISI is usually caused by multipath propagation or the inherent linear or non-linear frequency response of a

communication channel A communication channel refers either to a physical transmission medium such as a wire, or to a logical connection over a multiplexed medium such as a radio channel in telecommunications and computer networking. A channel is used for informa ...

causing successive symbols to blur together. The presence of ISI in the system introduces errors in the decision device at the receiver output. Therefore, in the design of the transmitting and receiving filters, the objective is to minimize the effects of ISI, and thereby deliver the digital data to its destination with the smallest error rate possible. Ways to alleviate intersymbol interference include adaptive equalization and

error correcting codes In computing, telecommunication, information theory, and coding theory, an error correction code, sometimes error correcting code, (ECC) is used for controlling errors in data over unreliable or noisy communication channels. The central idea is ...

Causes

Multipath propagation

One of the causes of intersymbol interference is

multipath propagation In radio communication, multipath is the propagation phenomenon that results in radio signals reaching the receiving antenna by two or more paths. Causes of multipath include atmospheric ducting, ionospheric reflection and refraction, and reflec ...

in which a wireless signal from a transmitter reaches the receiver via multiple paths. The causes of this include

reflection Reflection or reflexion may refer to: Science and technology * Reflection (physics), a common wave phenomenon ** Specular reflection, reflection from a smooth surface *** Mirror image, a reflection in a mirror or in water ** Signal reflection, in ...

(for instance, the signal may bounce off buildings),

refraction In physics, refraction is the redirection of a wave as it passes from one medium to another. The redirection can be caused by the wave's change in speed or by a change in the medium. Refraction of light is the most commonly observed phenomeno ...

(such as through the

foliage A leaf ( : leaves) is any of the principal appendages of a vascular plant stem, usually borne laterally aboveground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", while the leaves, s ...

of a tree) and atmospheric effects such as atmospheric ducting and

ionospheric reflection In radio communication, skywave or skip refers to the propagation of radio waves reflected or refracted back toward Earth from the ionosphere, an electrically charged layer of the upper atmosphere. Since it is not limited by the curvature ...

. Since the various paths can be of different lengths, this results in the different versions of the signal arriving at the receiver at different times. These delays mean that part or all of a given symbol will be spread into the subsequent symbols, thereby interfering with the correct detection of those symbols. Additionally, the various paths often distort the

amplitude The amplitude of a periodic variable is a measure of its change in a single period (such as time or spatial period). The amplitude of a non-periodic signal is its magnitude compared with a reference value. There are various definitions of amplit ...

and/or

phase Phase or phases may refer to: Science *State of matter, or phase, one of the distinct forms in which matter can exist *Phase (matter), a region of space throughout which all physical properties are essentially uniform * Phase space, a mathematic ...

of the signal, thereby causing further interference with the received signal.

Bandlimited channels

Another cause of intersymbol interference is the transmission of a signal through a

bandlimited Bandlimiting is the limiting of a signal's frequency domain representation or spectral density to zero above a certain finite frequency. A band-limited signal is one whose Fourier transform or spectral density has bounded support. A bandli ...

channel, i.e., one where the

frequency response In signal processing and electronics, the frequency response of a system is the quantitative measure of the magnitude and phase of the output as a function of input frequency. The frequency response is widely used in the design and analysis of sy ...

is zero above a certain frequency (the cutoff frequency). Passing a signal through such a channel results in the removal of frequency components above this cutoff frequency. In addition, components of the frequency below the cutoff frequency may also be attenuated by the channel. This

filtering Filter, filtering or filters may refer to: Science and technology Computing * Filter (higher-order function), in functional programming * Filter (software), a computer program to process a data stream * Filter (video), a software component tha ...

of the transmitted signal affects the shape of the pulse that arrives at the receiver. The effects of filtering a rectangular pulse not only change the shape of the pulse within the first symbol period, but it is also spread out over the subsequent symbol periods. When a message is transmitted through such a channel, the spread pulse of each individual symbol will interfere with following symbols. Bandlimited channels are present in both wired and wireless communications. The limitation is often imposed by the desire to operate multiple independent signals through the same area/cable; due to this, each system is typically allocated a piece of the total

bandwidth Bandwidth commonly refers to: * Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range * Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...

available. For wireless systems, they may be allocated a slice of the

electromagnetic spectrum The electromagnetic spectrum is the range of frequencies (the spectrum) of electromagnetic radiation and their respective wavelengths and photon energies. The electromagnetic spectrum covers electromagnetic waves with frequencies ranging from ...

to transmit in (for example,

FM radio FM broadcasting is a method of radio broadcasting using frequency modulation (FM). Invented in 1933 by American engineer Edwin Armstrong, wide-band FM is used worldwide to provide high fidelity sound over broadcast radio. FM broadcasting is cap ...

is often broadcast in the 87.5–108

MHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that one he ...

range). This allocation is usually administered by a

government agency A government or state agency, sometimes an appointed commission, is a permanent or semi-permanent organization in the machinery of government that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions, such as an administrati ...

; in the case of the United States this is the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...

(FCC). In a wired system, such as an

optical fiber cable A fiber-optic cable, also known as an optical-fiber cable, is an assembly similar to an electrical cable, but containing one or more optical fibers that are used to carry light. The optical fiber elements are typically individually coated with ...

, the allocation will be decided by the owner of the cable. The bandlimiting can also be due to the physical properties of the medium - for instance, the cable being used in a wired system may have a cutoff frequency above which practically none of the transmitted signal will propagate. Communication systems that transmit data over bandlimited channels usually implement

pulse shaping In electronics and telecommunications, pulse shaping is the process of changing the waveform of transmitted pulses to optimize the signal for its intended purpose or the communication channel. This is often done by limiting the bandwidth of the tran ...

to avoid interference caused by the bandwidth limitation. If the channel frequency response is flat and the shaping filter has a finite bandwidth, it is possible to communicate with no ISI at all. Often the channel response is not known beforehand, and an

adaptive equalizer An adaptive equalizer is an equalizer that automatically adapts to time-varying properties of the communication channel. It is frequently used with coherent modulations such as phase-shift keying, mitigating the effects of multipath propagation a ...

is used to compensate the frequency response.

Effects on eye patterns

One way to study ISI in a PCM or data transmission system experimentally is to apply the received wave to the vertical deflection plates of an oscilloscope and to apply a sawtooth wave at the transmitted symbol rate R (R = 1/T) to the horizontal deflection plates. The resulting display is called an eye pattern because of its resemblance to the human eye for binary waves. The interior region of the eye pattern is called the eye opening. An eye pattern provides a great deal of information about the performance of the pertinent system. # The width of the eye opening defines the time interval over which the received wave can be sampled without error from ISI. It is apparent that the preferred time for sampling is the instant of time at which the eye is open widest. # The sensitivity of the system to timing error is determined by the rate of closure of the eye as the sampling time is varied. # The height of the eye opening, at a specified sampling time, defines the margin over noise. An eye pattern, which overlays many samples of a signal, can give a graphical representation of the signal characteristics. The first image below is the eye pattern for a binary

phase-shift keying Phase-shift keying (PSK) is a digital modulation process which conveys data by changing (modulating) the phase of a constant frequency reference signal (the carrier wave). The modulation is accomplished by varying the sine and cosine inputs at a ...

(PSK) system in which a one is represented by an amplitude of −1 and a zero by an amplitude of +1. The current sampling time is at the center of the image and the previous and next sampling times are at the edges of the image. The various transitions from one sampling time to another (such as one-to-zero, one-to-one and so forth) can clearly be seen on the diagram. The

noise margin In electrical engineering, noise margin is the maximum voltage amplitude of extraneous signal (electrical engineering), signal that can be algebraically added to the noise-free worst-case input level without causing the output voltage to deviate fr ...

- the amount of noise required to cause the receiver to get an error - is given by the distance between the signal and the zero amplitude point at the sampling time; in other words, the further from zero at the sampling time the signal is the better. For the signal to be correctly interpreted, it must be sampled somewhere between the two points where the zero-to-one and one-to-zero transitions cross. Again, the further apart these points are the better, as this means the signal will be less sensitive to errors in the timing of the samples at the receiver. The effects of ISI are shown in the second image which is an eye pattern of the same system when operating over a multipath channel. The effects of receiving delayed and distorted versions of the signal can be seen in the loss of definition of the signal transitions. It also reduces both the noise margin and the window in which the signal can be sampled, which shows that the performance of the system will be worse (i.e. it will have a greater

bit error ratio In digital transmission, the number of bit errors is the number of received bits of a data stream over a communication channel that have been altered due to noise, interference, distortion or bit synchronization errors. The bit error rate (BER) i ...

). Image:Binary PSK eye diagram.svg, The eye diagram of a binary PSK system Image:Multipath system eye diagram.svg, The eye diagram of the same system with multipath effects added

Countering ISI

There are several techniques in

and data storage that try to work around the problem of intersymbol interference. * Design systems such that the impulse response is short enough that very little energy from one symbol smears into the next symbol. Raised-cosine-ISI

* Separate symbols in time with guard periods. * Apply an equalizer at the receiver, that, broadly speaking, attempts to undo the effect of the channel by applying an inverse filter. * Apply a sequence detector at the receiver, that attempts to estimate the sequence of transmitted symbols using the

Viterbi algorithm The Viterbi algorithm is a dynamic programming algorithm for obtaining the maximum a posteriori probability estimate of the most likely sequence of hidden states—called the Viterbi path—that results in a sequence of observed events, especiall ...

Intentional intersymbol interference

Coded modulation systems also exist that intentionally build a controlled amount of ISI into the system at the transmitter side, known as faster-than-Nyquist signaling. Such a design trades a computational complexity penalty at the receiver against a Shannon capacity gain of the overall transceiver system.Faster than Nyquist Signaling, by J.B. Anderson, F. Rusek, and V. Owall, Proceedings of the IEEE, Aug. 2013

References

External links

Definition of ISI
from

Federal Standard 1037C Federal Standard 1037C, titled Telecommunications: Glossary of Telecommunication Terms, is a United States Federal Standard issued by the General Services Administration pursuant to the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, a ...

Intersymbol interference concept
Telecommunication theory Wireless networking Television terminology