Postgraduate Course: Digital Communication Fundamentals (MSc) (PGEE10019)

Course Outline
School	School of Engineering	College	College of Science and Engineering
Credit level (Normal year taken)	SCQF Level 10 (Postgraduate)	Availability	Not available to visiting students
SCQF Credits	10	ECTS Credits	5
Summary	The aim of this course is to provide students with a thorough understanding of how information theory relates to the design of digital communications systems and to provide the knowledge and skills to perform design calculations on these systems. Students will use standard mathematical methods to model and analyse digital communication systems and predict performance metrics such as received SNR and expected bit error ratio. Contents: Probability theory, Gaussian distributions, central limit, moments, erf function; Decision theory, Bayes, maximum likelihood and Neyman Pearson; FDM, TDM, PAM, PWM, PCM, companding, delta modulation prediction; Linear prediction, perceptual coding and related techniques; Information theory, message probability and entropy; Source coding: Shannon-Fano, Huffman, RLC, Lempel-Ziv; Forward error correcting block coding (group codes and syndrome decoding); Forward error correcting coding (convolutional codes and Viterbi decoders); Bandpass modulation, OOK, FSK, PSK techniques; Bandpass phase modulation, QPSK, mod and demod, M-PSK, QAM; Bandpass modulation, APK, MSK, GMSK. Queue theory for arrivals only; Link budgets for terrestial microwave systems; Noise and link budgets in satellite microwave systems; Internet protocols (Norman Corder, Agilent Technologies); Mobile communications and GSM; Queue theory for packet data networks; Network protocols, stop and wait, go back N, and selective repeat ARQ; Spread spectrum communications techniques and mobile CDMA; Plesiochronous and synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH); Wireless LANs, PANs and home networks.
Course description	Not entered

Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites		Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations		Other requirements	None

Course Delivery Information

Academic year 2015/16, Not available to visiting students (SS1)		Quota: None
Course Start	Semester 1
Timetable	Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info)	Total Hours: 100 ( Lecture Hours 22, Seminar/Tutorial Hours 11, Formative Assessment Hours 1, Summative Assessment Hours 2, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 62 )
Assessment (Further Info)	Written Exam 100 %, Coursework 0 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment)	100% Examination
Feedback	Not entered
Exam Information
Exam Diet	Paper Name		Hours & Minutes
Main Exam Diet S1 (December)			2:00

Learning Outcomes
A student should be able to: Understand sources of noise in a communications system and statistical techniques for describing noise; Comprehend application of some common decision rules in digital communications receivers; Understand multiplexing and basic PCM speech coding; Explain the principles of linear predictive speech coding; Understand information theory and design block error correcting coders; Perform error rate calculations based on decision criteria; Understand the basic techniques for source coding and drawbacks of common techniques; Comprehend the uses of forward error correcting coding and the concept of block codes; Understand the application of block coding techniques as well as some fundamental limits on their performance; Comprehend the convolutional codes and the Viterbi decoding algorithm; Analyse the performance of ASK, FSK, PSK IF coding in terms of occupied bandwidth, complexity etc; Perform error rate calculations; Understand extension to QPSK, MPSK, QAM for improved spectral efficiency; Perform error rate calculations; Derive receiver noise performance, free space link path loss and perform receiver noise predictions on terrestial receiver systems; Extend to satellite based systems with low noise cooled earthstations; Appreciate industrial importance of networks, ATM and IP protocols; Comprehend the basic concepts of personal mobile communications and in particular GSM European TDMA systems; Comprehend the basic concepts of spread spectrum techniques as used in mobile personal communications; Understand operation of network protocols such as ARQ; Comprehend queueing concepts, delays, Littles result; Describe telephony multiplex systems using PDH and SDH; perform efficiency calculations on these systems; Understand operation of wireless LANs and PANs.