Course description: This course covers the analog underpinning of analog and digital communication systems: representation of signals and systems in the time and frequency domains; analog modulation schemes; random processes; prediction and noise analysis using random processes; noise sensitivity and bandwidth requirements of modulation schemes. Brief introduction to digital communications. Full description, including course goals and instructional objectives, can be found here.
Credit: 3 undergraduate hours or 3 graduate hours.
Prerequisite: ECE 313.
Course information in course explorer.
Lectures: MWF, 10-10.50am, ECEB 2015.
Lecture Attendance Policy:
- Lecture attendance is not required but is is strongly recommended in order for you to learn the course material well and obtain a good grade in the course. Active participation in your learning environment is vital to your success in this course.
- We invite relevant questions and comments during lectures. Address your questions and comments to the entire class; avoid disruptive behavior such as talking to neighbors, unless the instructor invites you to form discussion groups. Kindly turn off or mute cell phones, laptop computers, and other electronic devices during lectures.
- It is the student's responsibility to attend lectures and check their email daily, in case there are announcements from course staff. Missing a lecture and/or not checking your email will not excuse complying with course deadlines and policies.
Instructor: Prof. Juan Alvarez, alvarez@, 3046 Electrical & Computer Eng Bldg (ECEB), 300-5452.
Teaching Assistant: Yulun Wu, yulunwu3@.
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COURSE MATERIALS
Textbook:
- J. G. Proakis and M. Salehi, Fundamentals of Communication Systems, 2nd edition, Prentice-Hall, ISBN: 978-0133354850.
There is an e-text version, which is cheaper.
- Custom book for ECE459, ISBN: 978-1269807500 (available at IUB and TIS). It has only the chapters that we cover from the Proakis and Salehi textbook.
Additional resources:
- B. P. Lathi and Z. Ding, Modern Digital and Analog Communication Systems, Fifth edition, Oxford University Press, ISBN: 978-0-19-068684-0.
- Others are at Grainger in reserve.
Useful tables:
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DISCUSSION
Active participation in your learning environment is vital to your success in this course.
Piazza: For discussions and questions regarding course material.
Student online behavior:
In any social interaction, certain rules of etiquette are expected and contribute to more enjoyable and productive communication. The following are tips for interacting online via e-mail or discussion board messages, adapted from guidelines originally compiled by Chuq Von Rospach and Gene Spafford (1995):
- Remember that the person receiving your message is someone like you, deserving and appreciating courtesy and respect.
- Be brief; succinct, thoughtful messages have the greatest effect.
- Your messages reflect on you personally; take time to make sure that you are proud of their form and content.
- Use descriptive subject headings in your e-mails.
- Think about your audience and the relevance of your messages.
- Be careful when you use humor and sarcasm; absent the voice inflections and body language that aid face-to-face communication, Internet messages are easy to misinterpret.
- When making follow-up comments, summarize the parts of the message to which you are responding.
- Avoid repeating what has already been said; needless repetition is ineffective communication.
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GRADING POLICIES
It is the student's responsibility to check that the correct grades are entered in CANVAS.
The final grade will be calculated as follows:
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EXAMS
- Midterm exams constitute 51% of your grade and the final exam constitutes 30% of your grade.
- Your final exam will replace your lowest midterm if you score higher on it.
- Exams will take place during regular lecture time in the same room as lectures, on the following dates:
- Exam 1, Friday, September 26, 10-10:50am, ECEB 2015.
- Exam 2, Friday, October 24, 10-10:50am, ECEB 2015.
- Exam 3, Friday, November 21, 9.30-10:50am, ECEB 2015.
- Final, 8:00am-11:00am., Thursday Dec. 18, location TBA.
- Exams are closed notes, but a one-sided 8.5" by 11" sheet of equations are allowed. ONLY equations are allowed, no solutions to HW problems nor lecture examples nor previous exam problems nor graphs.
- Calculators and other electronics are not allowed
- DRES: Students with documented disabilities must notify the instructor within the first 7 days of classes.
- Online students need to set up the exams with the online office.
No conflict exams: There are no scheduled make-up exams.
If you miss an exam due to illness, injury, family emergency or other reasons beyond your control, you will be asked to provide your professor with an absence letter from the Student Assistance Center in the Office of the Dean of Students. Documentation which validates the absence is required by the Dean's Office to provide the absence letter. The absence letter will serve to verify the reason for your absence from the exam. Your midterm exam grade will be replaced by an average of your other three exams. However, this will only apply to one midterm exam, if you miss more than one midterm exam, then the others will receive a zero.
Exam Regrades
- We will use Gradescope to grade the exams, so you will receive an email from Gradescope to log in and see your graded exam.
- If after looking at the posted solutions, you feel there was an inaccuracy in the grading of your exam, you can request a regrade within Gradescope itself.
- Do not submit a regrade asking for more partial credit because you did so much work nor because you think something should be worth more/less that it does. Only regrades regarding inaccurate grading will be addressed.
- Regrades could be subjected a regrading of the entire exam, no just those parts you indicate. Therefore, your grade could go up or down as appropriate.
- Make sure you submit regrade requests by the deadline specified in the email sent out by the instructor once the exams are graded. No regrades will be accepted after the deadline, so do not wait until the last minute to submit it and then run into internet issues.
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HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS
Homework assignment policy:
- Homeworks will account for 14% of your overall course grade.
Homework assignments vary in total points, but they contribute equally to the final grade. Therefore, you need to rescale each one by the total points in the corresponding homework assignment before calculating the average
- Homeworks will be assigned almost every week and due mostly by 6pm on Wednesdays. The first homework will be due on Wednesday, September 3 by 6pm.
- Submissions will be made via Gradescope.
- Instructions for uploading your solutions to Gradescope can be found here.
- Gradescope now has a mobile app to make it easier to upload.
- Instructions on how to scan the pdf of the solutions in Android are here.
- Instructions on how to scan the pdf of the solutions in MacOS are here.
- Late homeworks will be accepted up to 1 hour after the deadline with a deduction of 10% of the total points (no negative final score), , so please mark your calendar with the deadlines to avoid losing points.
Do not wait until the last minute to submit it and then run into internet issues.
- In order to account for sickness, travel or internet issues, your two lowest homework grades will be dropped.
- Homeworks will include Matlab problems to get practical exposure to the concepts covered during lecture. Please make sure you have access to Matlab. There is information for EWS here and for CItrix here.
- Make sure you box your final answers and match problem parts accurately in Gradescope, or you will be deducted a percentage of the corresponding problem part.
- Make sure your submission is complete before logging out of Gradescope because we will not give an extension if you do not complete the submission. You will receive an automated email from Gradescope that includes the date and time you turned in the assignment, so make sure you get it.
- Make sure that your homeworks are neat enough to read. Graders has the flexibility to deduct points for lack of neatness. Graders should not have to guess what you wrote and in where in the page you wrote it. An easy to follow solution with each part clearly identified is required.
- Do not solve the HW directly on the provided pdf because there is not enough space for it and you will most likely lose points due to lack of neatness.
- Homeworks constitute an essential component of your learning experience in the course and prepare you for your exams in effective ways. Investing time to do your homeworks with care will pay off when you are taking your exams.
- You will be expected to provide detailed explanations of your solutions in order to obtain credit in your homeworks. Graders should not have to guess or make assumptions about why you are using a certain equation, or how you came up with an equation, or what polarity you used, etc. Conversely, solutions lacking full explanations will receive zero credit even when the answer provided may be correct, and may lead to an 'academic integrity violation' case being opened against you.
- You are encouraged to collaborate to understand the problems in the assignment, but each student should solve the problems individually for submission even if they work together initially to understand how to solve the problems. Copying a joint solution or someone else's solution is not acceptable and may lead to sanctions and an 'academic integrity violation' case being opened against you.
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- Using previous semester homework solutions and online solutions (Chegg, etc.) may lead to sanctions and an 'academic integrity violation' case being opened against you.
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- Please keep these cautionary remarks in mind as you are working out your assignments and avoid submitting unsubstantiated solutions to avoid any misinterpretations.
- Solutions will be posted in Canvas 1 hour after the corresponding deadline.
- Regrades: You will receive an email from Gradescope so you can log in and see your graded homework. If after looking at the posted solutions, you feel there was an inaccuracy in the grading of your homework, you can request a regrade within Gradescope itself.
Make sure you submit regrade requests before 9am of the Wednesday after your graded homework is made available via Gradescope. Regrades will not be accepted after that date.
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OFFICE HOURS
Office hours will be held starting September 2, through December 10, except November 24-28.
- Mondays, 4-4.50pm, Yulun Wu, ECEB 3034, Zoom
- Tuesdays, 4-4.50pm, Yulun Wu, ECEB 5034, Zoom.
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Final project
Learning objectives:
- Encourage students to broaden their knowledge and understanding of communications beyond the classroom.
- Become familiar with the latest advancements in the field.
- Develop critical analysis skills.
- Effectively communicate information to the audience.
Project Description:
You must select one peer-reviewed research journal or article paper on a communications topic related to the course and create a 10-minute video presentation summarizing the paper.
Project Requirements:
- Finding a Research Paper:
- Select a peer-reviewed research paper published within the last 3 years related to the communications topics in this course.
- Ensure the paper is from a reputable journal or conference. IEEE Communications Society journals or Google Scholar are great examples of repositories for scientific publications.
- Creating the Video Presentation:
- Software: video files must be in MP4 format and up to 500 MB in size. You can simply record yourself via zoom, but any software is acceptable.
- Duration: The presentation should take no longer than 12 minutes.
- Slides: Prepare about 10 slides, with each slide corresponding to approximately 1 minute of your presentation:
- Slide 1: Introduction to the topic and the selected research paper.
- Slide 2-3: Background of the topic you selected.
- Slide 4-8: Summary of the research paper.
- Slide 9: Your opinion about the potential impact of the research.
- Slide 10: Conclusion and references. Please note that your source must be cited properly. Use the following websites for guidelines and examples of how to cite:
- Content: Ensure each slide is clear, concise, and visually engaging. Use bullet points, images, and graphs where appropriate.
- Delivery: Practice your presentation to ensure it is well-paced and within the time limit. Speak clearly and confidently.
- Submission: Submit the research paper, your power point slides and the video via Gradescope by the end of the last day of classes (December10 ). There is a 48-hour penalty-free extension for this assignment past this date.
- Evaluation Criteria:
- Appropriateness and relevance of the selected paper.
- Insightfulness of the critical evaluation.
- Clarity, organization, and engagement of the video presentation.
- Following the assignment requirements and meeting the time limit.
AI Usage: You may use AI tools to gather sources, but you must verify that each source is legitimate. If any of your sources turn out to be non-existent or nonsensical, you will receive a score of 0 for the project.
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OUTLINE
- Introduction
- Representation of Signals and Systems
- Analog Modulation
- Amplitude modulation
- AM, DSB, SSB, VSB, QAM
- Modulation/demodulation
- Bandwidth and power
- FDM
- AM radio
- Angle modulation
- FM, PM
- Modulation/demodulation
- Bandwidth and power
- FM radio
- Probability and Random Processes
- Probability review
- Introduction to random processes
- Distribution and density functions of random processes
- Mean, auto-correlation, and auto-covariance functions
- Stationary random processes
- Stationary, WSS, cyclostationary
- Power spectral density
- Gaussian random processes
- White random processes
- Linear filtering of random processes
- Bandpass random processes
- Noise, narrow band noise
- Noise in Analog Modulation
- Signal-to-noise ratio in amplitude modulation systems
- DSB-SC, SSB
- DSB-TC: small noise
- Signal-to-noise ratios in angle modulation systems
- FM
- Small noise
- Pre-emphasis and de-emphasis
- PM
- Digital Communication
- Sampling, quantization, quantization noise
- Waveform coding: PCM, DPCM, DM
- Line Codes and Power Spectra of Binary Transmission:
- RZ vs. NRZ
- on/off, polar, bipolar, Manchester
- Intersymbol interference (ISI)
- Eye diagrams.
- Digital modulation (PAM, PWM, PPM, ASK, FSK, PSK, QPSK, and QAM)
- Baseband pulse transmission in AWGN: Optimum receiver, detection error probability
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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Anti-Racism and Inclusivity Statement
We in the Illinois ECE community are committed to understanding, empathizing with, and respecting each other, embracing the many differences among us.
- The Grainger College of Engineering is committed to the creation of an anti-racist, inclusive community that welcomes diversity along a number of dimensions, including, but not limited to, race, ethnicity and national origins, gender and gender identity, sexuality, disability status, class, age, or religious beliefs. The College recognizes that we are learning together in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement, that Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous voices and contributions have largely either been excluded from, or not recognized in, science and engineering, and that both overt racism and micro-aggressions threaten the well-being of our students and our university community.
- The effectiveness of this course is dependent upon each of us to create a safe and encouraging learning environment that allows for the open exchange of ideas while also ensuring equitable opportunities and respect for all of us. Everyone is expected to help establish and maintain an environment where students, staff, and faculty can contribute without fear of personal ridicule, or intolerant or offensive language. If you witness or experience racism, discrimination, micro-aggressions, or other offensive behavior, you are encouraged to bring this to the attention of the course director if you feel comfortable. You can also report these behaviors to Campus Belonging Resources (https://diversity.illinois.edu/diversity-campus-culture/belonging-resources/). Based on your report, Members of the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion staff will follow up and reach out to students to make sure they have the support they need to be healthy and safe. If the reported behavior also violates university policy, staff in the Office for Student Conflict Resolution may respond as well and will take appropriate action.
Academic integrity
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Student Code should is very important for you to know.
Students should pay particular attention to Article 1, Part 4: Academic Integrity.
Academic dishonesty may result in a failing grade. Every student is expected to review and abide by the Academic Integrity Policy.
Ignorance is not an excuse for any academic dishonesty. It is your responsibility to read this policy to avoid any misunderstanding.
Do not hesitate to ask the instructor(s) if you are ever in doubt about what constitutes plagiarism, cheating, or any other breach of academic integrity.
Inclusivity
The effectiveness of this course is dependent upon the creation of an encouraging and safe classroom environment. Exclusionary, offensive or harmful speech (such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.) will not be tolerated and in some cases subject to University harassment procedures. We are all responsible for creating a positive and safe environment that allows all students equal respect and comfort. I expect each of you to help establish and maintain and environment where you and your peers can contribute without fear of ridicule or intolerant or offensive language.
Disability Resources and Educational Services (DRES)
To obtain disability-related academic adjustments and/or auxiliary aids, students with disabilities must contact the course instructor and the Disability Resources and Educational Services (DRES) as soon as possible.
To contact DRES, you may visit 1207 S. Oak St., Champaign, call 333-4603, e-mail disability@illinois.edu or go to the DRES website.
If you are concerned you have a disability-related condition that is impacting your academic progress, there are academic screening appointments available on campus that can help diagnosis a previously undiagnosed disability by visiting the DRES website and selecting “Sign-Up for an Academic Screening†at the bottom of the page.
FERPA
Any student who has suppressed their directory information pursuant to Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) should self-identify to the instructor to ensure protection of the privacy of their attendance in this course. Click here for more information on FERPA.
Sexual misconduct
The University of Illinois is committed to combating sexual misconduct. Faculty and staff members are required to report any instances of sexual misconduct to the University’s Title IX and Disability Office. In turn, an individual with the Title IX and Disability Office will provide information about rights and options, including accommodations, support services, the campus disciplinary process, and law enforcement options. A list of the designated University employees who, as counselors, confidential advisors, and medical professionals, do not have this reporting responsibility and can maintain confidentiality, can be found here. Other information about resources and reporting is available here.
Support Resources and Supporting Fellow Students in Distress
As members of the Illinois community, we each have a responsibility to express care and concern for one another. If you come across a classmate whose behavior concerns you, whether in regards to their well-being or yours, we encourage you to refer this behavior to the Student Assistance Center (1-217-333-0050) or online. Based upon your report, staff in the Student Assistance Center reaches out to students to make sure they have the support they need to be healthy and safe. Further, as a Community of Care, we want to support you in your overall wellness. We know that students sometimes face challenges that can impact academic performance (examples include mental health concerns, food insecurity, homelessness, personal emergencies). Should you find that you are managing such a challenge and that it is interfering with your coursework, you are encouraged to contact theStudent Assistance Center (SAC)in the Office of the Dean of Students for support and referrals to campus and/or community resources. The SAC has a Dean on Duty available to see students who walk in, call, or email the office during business hours. For mental health emergencies, you can call 911 or contact the Counseling Center.
Run, hide, fight.
Emergencies can happen anywhere and at any time. It is important that we take a minute to prepare for a situation in which our safety or even our lives could depend on our ability to react quickly. When we’re faced with almost any kind of emergency – like severe weather or if someone is trying to hurt you – we have three options: Run, hide or fight.
Run, hide, fight video.
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Run
Leaving the area quickly is the best option if it is safe to do so.
- Take time now to learn the different ways to leave your building.
- Leave personal items behind.
- Assist those who need help, but consider whether doing so puts yourself at risk.
- Alert authorities of the emergency when it is safe to do so.
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Hide
When you can’t or don’t want to run, take shelter indoors.
- Take time now to learn different ways to seek shelter in your building.
- If severe weather is imminent, go to the nearest indoor storm refuge area.
- If someone is trying to hurt you and you can’t evacuate, get to a place
where you can’t be seen, lock or barricade your area if possible,
silence your phone, don’t make any noise and don’t come out until you
receive an Illini-Alert indicating it is safe to do so.
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Fight
As a last resort, you may need to fight to increase your chances of survival.
- Think about what kind of common items are in your area which you
can use to defend yourself.
- Team up with others to fight if the situation allows.
- Mentally prepare yourself – you may be in a fight for your life
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Please be aware of people with disabilities who may need additional assistance in emergency situations
Other resources
- police.illinois.edu/safe for more information on how to prepare for emergencies, including
how to run, hide or fight and building floor plans that can show you safe areas.
- emergency.illinois.edu to sign up for Illini-Alert text messages.
- Follow the University of Illinois Police Department on Twitter and Facebook to get regular
updates about campus safety.