Course description: Reliable communication of one bit of information over three types of channels: additive Gaussian noise, wireline, and wireless. Emphasis on the impact of bandwidth and power on the data rate and reliability, using discrete-time models. Technological examples used as case studies, like 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G.

Lectures: TR, 9.30am-10.50am, via Zoom lectures (password is in Compass). Lecture recordings available in Mediaspace channel

Instructor: Prof. Juan Alvarez, alvarez@, 3046 Electrical & Computer Eng Bldg (ECEB), 300-5452.

Lecture Attendance Policy: 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.

Course notes:

• Lecture Notes on Digital Communication, Viswanath: pdf. Hardcopy available from the ECE Copy Room.
  • Errata
• Supplemental notes:
  • Fundamentals of Wireless Communication, Tse and Viswanath.
  • Introduction to Communication Systems, Madhow.
  • J. G. Proakis and M. Salehi, Fundamentals of Communication Systems, 2nd edition, Prentice-Hall, ISBN: 978-0133354850.
  • B. P. Lathi and Z. Ding, Modern Digital and Analog Communication Systems, Fifth edition, Oxford University Press, ISBN: 978-0-19-068684-0.

Prerequisite: The basic prerequisites are a probability course (such as ECE 313 or STAT 410) and some basic signal processing background (such as ECE 210).

Course Outline

Communication Systems are the basic workhorses behind the information age. Examples include high speed communication networks, wireless and wireline telephone systems, high speed modems, etc. The basic currency of information is digital: bits . Broadly speaking, this course is centered around a single theme: reliably communicate bits over an unreliable physical medium. The emphasis is on how to transfer this currency between a transmitter-receiver pair. The transfer involves a physical medium, whose input-output characteristics are not deterministically known. The curriculum has three broad parts:

• Channel Model : Even though the input-output relationship of the physical medium is not deterministically known, statistical quantities of this relationship, such as mean and correlation, can be physically measured and are typically constant over the time-scale of communication.
• Transmission and Reception Strategies : The statistical model of the physical medium is then brought into bearing in the engineering design of appropriate transmission and reception strategies (modulation and demodulation, in the language of this course).
• Design Resources and Performance : The resources available to the communication engineer are power and bandwidth . The final part of the course is to relate the statistical performance of the communication strategies to these two key resources.

• Additive white Gaussian noise channel: The received signal is the transmit signal plus a statistically independent signal. This is a basic model that underlies the more complicated wireline and wireless channels.
• Telephone channel: The received signal is the transmit signal passed through a time-invariant, causal filter plus statistically independent noise. Voiceband v.90 modem and DSL technologies are used as examples.
• Wireless channel: The received signal is the transmit signal passed through a time-varying filter plus statistically independent noise. 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G standards are used as examples.

Office hours

Office hours (starting February 1 through May 10):

• Mondays, 4-5pm, Prof. Alvarez, via Zoom.
• Fridays, 4-5pm, Prof. Alvarez, via Zoom.