Objectives and competences
The objective of this course is for students to understand basic and advance principles of transmission systems, their design and analysis at the system level.
Content (Syllabus outline)
• Introduction to digital transmission systems: historical background, present-day digital transmission, digital transmission standards, advantages of digital transmission, a simplified digital transmission system.
• Principles of system design: general plan, transmission services, hypothetical reference circuits, performance objectives.
• Communication channels in media: guided and unguided media, selection of transmittion media, parameters of transmission channel.
• Baseband transmission: introduction, types of binary coding, performance of binary codes, data scrambling, spread spectrum, error detection and correction.
• Duplexing: frequency and time duplexing, guard intervals.
• Access techniques: frequency, time, code and space division.
• Transmission systems: digital cable systems, fibre optic transmission systems, digital radio systems, transmission media characteristics, noise and interference effects, amplifiers, regenerative repeaters.Testing, monitoring, and control: testing techniques, performance monitoring techniques, fault isolation, monitoring and control systems.
• Software defined radio systems: re-configurability in heterogeneous networks, reconfigurable terminals and networks, profile and radio resource management, software and hardware reconfiguration.
Learning and teaching methods
• lectures,
• tutorial,
• lab work.
Intended learning outcomes - knowledge and understanding
On completion of this course the student will be able to
• explain common models of transmission systems and list digital transmission standards, including their advantages and weaknesses,
• explain coding approaches in the base band,
• explain and represent digital modulation techniques and classify them by their purposes and performance, including OFDM modulation and direct spectrum synthesis,
• represent and explain different types of transmission systems and appurtenant architectures, including evaluation of transmission media characteristics and available performance of the transmission channels,
• design and analyse transmission systems of limited complexity at the system level,
• explain principles and concepts of software defined radio systems at the system level.
Intended learning outcomes - transferable/key skills and other attributes
• Communication skills: oral lab work defence, manner of expression at the tests or written exam.
• Use of information technology: use of transmission system design and simulation software tools.
• Calculation skills: performing calculating operations with simulation and measurement results.
• Problem solving: designing and simulating of simple transmission systems.
Readings
D. R. Smith: Digital Transmission Systems, Third Edition, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, 2004.
B. A. Carlson, B. P. Crilly, J. Rutledge: Communication Systems: An Introduction to Signals and Noise in Electrical Communication, Fourth Edition, McGraw-Hill, Boston, 2002.
M. Dillinger, K. Madani, N. Alonistioti: Software Defined Radio: Architectures, Systems and Functions, John Wiley & Sons Ltd., West Sussex, 2003.
Additional information on implementation and assessment The written exam may be substituted with continuous knowledge testing and assessment.
