ELEC 373, W24 : Solution #3

Problem 1
Assuming that the cyclic redundancy code (CRC) is applied for error detection. Let g(x) = x3 + x + 1.
Consider the information sequence 1001.

(a) Find the codeword corresponding to the preceding information sequence.

(b) Suppose that the codeword has a transmission error in the first bit (i.e., the leftmost bit). What does
the receiver obtain when it does its error checking?

ANSWER:

a. We have:

b. CRC calculated by RX = 101 ⇒ error

Problem 2
ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) uses an eight-bit CRC on the information contained in the header.
The header has six fields: GFC field (first 4 bits); VPI field (next 8 bits); VCI field (next 16 bits); Type field
(next 3 bits); CLP field (next 1 bit); CRC (next 8 bits).

(a) The CRC is calculated using the following generator polynomial: g(x) = x8 + x2 + x + 1. Find the
CRC bits if the GFC, VPI, Type, and CLP fields are all zero and the VCI field is 00000000 00001111.
Assume the GFC bits correspond to the highest-order bits in the polynomial.

(b) Can this code detect single bit errors? Explain why.

ANSWER:

a. By doing Binary division we have:

Problem 2 continued on next page. . . Page 1 of 4

b. Yes, because g(x) has at least two non-zero terms.

Problem 3
A 64-kilobyte message is to be transmitted from the source to the destination, as shown below. The network
limits packets to a maximum size of two kilobytes, and each packet has a 32-byte header. The transmission
lines in the network have a bit error rate of 10−6 , and Stop-and-Wait ARQ is used in each transmission line.
How long does it take on the average to get the message from the source to the destination? Assume that
the signal propagates at a speed of 2 × 105 km/second, and the ACK error, the ACK time, and processing
time are negligible.

ANSWER:
Message Size 64000 bytes
Max Packet Size 2000 bytes
Packet Header 32 bytes
Available for info 1968 bytes
Number of packets needed 32.52 packets
Total 33 packets

bit error rate 10−6

Problem 3 continued on next page. . . Page 2 of 4

Distance 1000 Km
Bandwidth 1.5 Mb/s

Since we assume that the ACK error, the ACK time, and processing time are negligible, we have:
Tprop = distance / propagation speed = 0.0050 s
Tf = packet size / bandwidth = 0.0107 s
T0 = Tprop + Tf = 0.0157 s
Pf = probability of error in packet = 0.01587
E[Ttotal ] = T0 /(1 − Pf ) = 0.016

There is pipelining effect that occurs as follows: After the first packet arrives at switch 1, two transmissions
take place in parallel. The first packet undergoes stop-and-wait on the second link while the second packet
undergoes stop-and-wait in the first link. The packet arriving at the switch cannot begin transmission on the
next link until the previous packet has been delivered, so there is an interaction between the transmission
times of the two packets. We will neglect this effect. The time to send every packet over two links is then the
initial packet transmission time + 33 additional packet times, and so the average time is E[Ttotal ]×34 = 0.544
seconds. 

Problem 4
Consider a slotted ALOHA system with a large number of nodes. In a time slot, each backlogged packet
(packet in the network that has not been transmitted successfully) is transmitted with probability p. And
in each time slot, a new packet arrives to the system with probability . The new packet will attempt
transmission in the next slot as a backlogged packet. All these transmissions are independent of one another.
ˆ If there are N backlogged packets in the current time slot, find the probability distribution of the
number of backlogged packets in the next time slot. (Hint: the number of backlogged packets in the
next time slot can be N , N − 1, or N + 1).

ˆ Calculate the average increase of the number of the backlogged packets in a time slot.

ˆ If backlogged packets accumulate with the time, then the buffer will overflow and the system will be
unstable. Is the given ALOHA system always a stable system? If not, under what condition the system
becomes unstable?

ANSWER:
(a) The probabilities are given by

PN,N −1 = (1 − ) · N p(1 − p)N −1

PN,N = (1 − ) · (1 − N p(1 − p)N −1 ) +  · N p(1 − p)N −1

(b) The average increase E[∆N ] is given by:

E[∆N ] = −1 · PN,N −1 + 0 · PN,N + 1 · PN,N +1 =  − N p(1 − p)N −1

(c) We have to have E[∆N ] < 0 to stabilize the system, i.e.,

 < N p(1 − p)N −1

Problem 4 continued on next page. . . Page 3 of 4

Problem 5
Find the Birkhoff-von Neumann decomposition of the following traffic matrix:
 
0 0.5 0.4
Λ = 0.6 0 0.3
0.1 0.4 0

ANSWER: 

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