ELEC321 Outline/Study Guide on Mac

ELEC321 - Communication Systems

Outline/Study Guide
1. Introduction

ELEC321 is compulsory for some BTech students, but is also available to all students with
the relevant prerequisites. These include electronics, to ensure a knowledge of basic circuits
and their behaviour, and mathematics, because of the considerable maths content of
communication theory.

2. Aims

Students will examine communication systems with an emphasis on the systems rather than
the circuit aspects, but mainly dealing with the physical level rather than the higher levels of
the network model. Both analogue and digital techniques (the latter being the staple of
fibre-optic systems) will be included. The general topics to be covered are listed as below:

week 1 - 1. Introduction to Signals and Operation

2. Review of Fourier Series
3. Fourier Transform

week 2 - 4. Classification of Systems, Impulse Response, and Transfer Function

6. Amplitude Modulation and Demodulation

week 3 - 7. Double-Sideband Modulation

8. Single-Sideband and Vestigial-Sideband Modulation
9. Angle Modulation

week 4 - 10. Wideband Frequency Modulation

11. Angle Modulation
12. Sampling Theorem, Pulse-Amplitude Modulation, and Time-Division
Multiplexing

week 5 - 14. Pulse Code Modulation

15. Quantisation Noise and Nonuniform Quantisation
16. -

week 6 - 17. Delta Modulation

18. Examples of Time Division Multiplexed PAM and PCM Systems
19. Waveform Shaping and Eye Patterns

week 7 - 20. Line Coding

21. Orthonormal Respresentation of Signals
22. Amplitude-Shift Keying (ASK) Modulation

week 8 - 23. Phase-Shift Keying (PSK) Modulation

24. Frequency-Shift Keying (FSK) Modulation and Quadrature Amplitude
Modulation (QAM)

week 9 - 25. Spectral Representation of Random Signals

26. Performance of Binary Baseband Signals Due to Noise
27. Random Signals Through Linear Systems and Matched-Filter Detection

week 10 - 28. Narrowband Noise Representation

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29. Output Signal-to-Noise Ratios in AM and FM

30. Signal Space Analysis of BASK, BFSK, BPSK, and QAM

week 11 - 31. Concept of Information and Entropy

32. Shannon Information Capacity Theorem and Implications
33. -

week 12 - 34. Lossless Source Coding - Huffman and Shannon-Fano Coding

35. Encoding of Linear Block Codes
36. Examples and Modifications of Linear Block Codes

week 13 - 37. Syndrome Decoding and Performance of Block Codes

38. Polynomial and Matrix Descriptions of Cyclic Codes
39. Encoding and Syndrome Decoding of Cyclic Codes

Practical work will support the theory and will take various forms, from examining the
behaviour of simple functional blocks, to constructing small systems, to simulating larger
systems.

3. Textbook

There is no formal textbook for the course. Most of the course materials were based on the
book by Mischa Schwartz, 'Information Transmission, Modulation, and Noise', 4/e,
McGraw-Hill, 1990. Other books may be used by students as background reading. For
further readings, try:

[1] Hsu, H. P., ‘Schaum’s Outlines of Theory and Problems of Analog and Digital
Communication’, McGraw-Hill, 1993.

[2] Couch, Leon W., II, 'Digital and Analog Communication Systems', 5/e, Prentice-
Hall, 1997.

[3] Haykin, S., ‘Communications Systems’, 4/e, J. Wiley & Sons, 2001.

[4] Sklar, B., 'Digital communication : Fundamentals and Applications', Prentice-Hall,

1988.

[5] Gibson, J. D., 'Principles of Digital and Analog communication', 2/e, MacMillan,
1993.

[6] Roden, M. S., 'Analog and Digital communication', 4/e, Prentice-Hall, 1995.

[7] Taub, H. and Schilling, D. L., 'Principles of Communication Systems', 2/e,

McGraw-Hill, 1987.

4. Lectures

There are three lectures per week, which will fairly closely follow the timetable in section
2. Accordingly some material will be omitted and some will not be covered so thoroughly.

5. Assignments

One form of assignment will consist of preparation for practical sessions. This will apply
to all sessions to some extent, while at times formal preparation will be a requirement for
attendance.

Another form of assignment will consist of preparation for tutorial sessions. At each

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tutorial session a list of problems, mainly from the text, will be supplied; these will
normally cover the topics of the previous three lectures. Students should submit written
answers to these problems at least an hour before the next tutorial session. They will
(obviously) not be marked, but a record will be kept of each reasonable submission, and
the two or three problems which caused most difficulty noted. At the tutorial session a
student may be selected to demonstrate (or at least lead a discussion on) how each of the
selected problems may be answered.

The overall tutorial record will affect the final result of students who would otherwise be
on the borderline of two grades. Finally, it is possible that there will be a more substantial
revision assignment, due back soon after the break. This may well attract some marks (up
to 10%) towards the final grade, but this is yet to be decided.

6. Practical Sessions

Each student must attend weekly 3-hour sessions, initially using equipment which
performs the various functions at an abnormally low frequency to keep the cost low while
still illustrating the principles; later sessions use a workstation running a package capable of
simulating a wide variety of systems; still later we study more complex systems at a low
frequency. No student without proper shoes will be admitted to the laboratory, for
insurance reasons. (That is, no bare feet, no thongs, no sandals.)

7. Tutorials

Each tutorial session will normally be started by the tutor's inviting and answering
questions based on the lectures of the previous week, or perhaps on the last or next
practical session. The main business, however, will be to discuss the answers to the
problems set at the previous tutorial session - see section 5.

8. Assessment

Unless assignments play a bigger part in ELEC321 than is envisaged at the time of writing
this outline (see section 5), assessment will consist of:

practical work 25%

final examination______________________________________________ 75%
Total 100%

Also, attendance at practical sessions is regarded as compulsory. To be precise, any

student who is absent from more than two sessions may be regarded as not complying
with requirements, and not permitted to sit for examination. Documented evidence that
such attendance was substantially impossible, for example because of protracted illness,
may, of course, allow this requirement to be relaxed.

While extensive calculations will not figure large in ELEC321 (except for the simulations),
you will find a basic scientific calculator to be useful, and may use it in the examination.

9. Lectures and Other Course Materials

Most course materials (in .pdf format) are available at the following website:

http://www.elec.mq.edu.au/~cl/teaching.html.

You will need a recent version of the Adobe Acrobat Reader to read them.

Charles Lee E6A242 Extension 9142

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