EET 478 Digital Communication Systems

ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY PROGRAM
EET 478. DIGITAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS
Fall 2002

Instructor:    Dr. Albert Lozano-Nieto,
                        Penn State University at Wilkes-Barre Campus
                        Room 122, Technology Center.
                        Phone # : (570) 675-9245              email: AXL17@psu.edu

Meeting times: M W, F: 8:00 - 8:50 TC 017 (Consult Register's Office for last-minute information)
W: 1:00 - 3:50 TC 113 (Telcom lab)
Office hours: M, W, F: 10-12. For other times, please consult with me

Email: Students are required to activate and use their Penn State email accounts as it will be used by the instructor to communicate with the students. If you wish to use another email provider, contact Computer Services to have your email forwarded. I will not accept email from non-psu addresses.

Textbook: A. Bateman. Digital Communications: Design for the Real World
Addison-Wesley, 1999

Students with special needs are encouraged to contact me so we can make the required arrangements.

CATALOG DESCRIPTION: (4:3:3) Discrete signal analysis, A/D Conversion, digital modulation techniques, encoding, decoding, data communications, noise. Prerequisite: EET 403

ACADEMIC HONESTY
The work in all the tests, quizzes and exams is to be yours alone. Failure to abide by this rule or the omission of any other deliberately dishonest act, may result in failure of the course with no late drop permitted. Students are encouraged to discuss homework and work together as is helpful. However, the written solutions is to be an individual effort. Laboratory experiments will be group efforts although the reporting of such work is also an individual effort.

EET 478 COURSE POLICIES

* CLASS ATTENDANCE. Class attendance is mandatory. Excessive absences will trigger the University mechanisms to prevent student failure. Excessive unexcused absences may be a cause for failing this course.

* PUNCTUALITY. I expect you to be considerate to your fellow students and myself by arriving to the classroom before the beginning of the class. Although there are instances that arriving late is unavoidable, like in the case of inclement weather for example, make an effort to consistently arrive on time. Let me know if you anticipate arriving late due to a night-shift job, family commitments, etc. Otherwise, I expect you to be in class when it starts. Excessive instances of tardiness will have an impact on the in class participation portion of your final grade (See grading)

* HOMEWORK. Homework assignments are due at the beginning of the class period, therefore, don't be late. It is your own responsibility to turn your work to me. Homework assignments turned in afterwards will not be accepted. Late days cannot be used for homework.

*LABORATORY. Laboratory attendance is mandatory. If you miss a lab, it is your responsibility to contact me to find a time to do the lab work on your own. If I don't see you doing the lab work, it was never done. If you don't do the lab work you cannot write a lab report. For more specific laboratory work policies consult the appropriate section in this syllabus.

* STUDENT BEHAVIOR. I expect students conduct themselves in the most professional, civil, and courteous manner. Examples of disruptive behavior include, but are not limited to: talking and reading during class, being consistently late, shouting at classmates, disrupting others, falling asleep, dominating discussions, using cell phones, using computers for non-academic purposes, doing academic work belonging to other courses, etc.

EET 478 COURSE OUTLINE

INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS

Overview of the course
Spectral and temporal analysis of digital signals
Useful mathematical relationships
The communication channel and protocols
Overview of terms used in Digital Communications

FUNDAMENTALS OF DATA TRANSMISSION

Design considerations
Basics of transmission
Multi-level signaling
Capacity of the channel

BASEBAND DATA TRANSMISSION

Inter-symbolic interference
Eye diagrams
Filtering techniques
Matched filtering
Partial response signaling

CHANNEL DEGRADATION

Gain, phase and group delay distortion
Interference and noise
Telephony channels
Wireless channels

Additional Exercises for Chapter 4

DIGITAL MODULATION

Amplitude Shift Keying
Frequency Shift Keying
Phase Shift Keying
Evaluation of modulation schemes

MULTI-LEVEL SIGNAL MODULATION

Multilevel Amplitude Shift Keying
Multilevel Frequency Shift Keying
Multilevel Phase Shift Keying
Complex modulation schemes

CODING

Source coding
Channel coding
Block coding
Complex coding schemes

MULTI-USER MODULATION SCHEMES

Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA)
Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)
Other modulation schemes

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS Assigning work to the students provides a dual feedback mechanism. First, the assignment of homework tells the students what concepts they need to study in deeper detail or consult with the instructor, at the same time that gives them the opportunity to practice what they have learned in the classroom. Second, it provides the instructor with feedback on how the concepts are being developed among the students. For these reasons, and given the dynamic mechanism involved in homework, its timely development is critical to its success. Consult homework policies in this document if necessary.

EET 478 LABORATORY

Laboratory for the EET 478 has a dual purpose:

1.- Verify and practice the concepts developed -during the lecture sessions
2.- Explore new concepts, developing the students’s analytical and practical skills and enhance their learning experience by relating to "real world" situations

LABORATORY POLICIES AND GRADING:

a) ATTENDANCE. Refer to Attendance policy in this document.

b) EXPERIMENT DEVELOPMENT AND RESULTS.

- Students are required to develop the experiments according to the guidelines provided by the instructor during the laboratory allocated time.
- Students are expected and encouraged to modify the experiment guidelines as necessary to reach the goals for each experiment. In the case the guidelines have been modified, the students need to document these modifications in their laboratory reports. Experiments that have been modified by the students in a successful manner will be given additional credit towards the whole EET 478 course.
- Laboratory work tries to emulate a real environment in which professionals need to work in less-than-ideal conditions. If you cannot use the equipment you think may do the job, or something is not working right, use your engineering skills to work around this problem and document it in your lab report.

c) LABORATORY REPORTS. After an experimental module is completed, the students are required to develop a laboratory report according to the attached guidelines. Due date will be published in the course's website. Some considerations include:

Laboratory reports are required to be typed using a word processor software, and will be graded based on the technical contents, grammar and clarity of writing and professional appearance.
Graphs are required to be plotted using Excel® or any other similar software package.
While the laboratory work is done together within your group and working with other groups, the laboratory report reflects your individual effort and your understanding of the work performed and its consequences for the subjects under study. For this reason, all the students are required to submit individual reports for their laboratory work. I expect that the experimental results within a group will be the same. However, the interpretation of these experimental results reflects your understanding of the subject matter. Excessive file sharing within a group will yield a grade of F for that particular report.
If the Laboratory report does not meet minimum standards, student will be required to resubmit the report until it meets the requirements.
All the students will receive feedback in writing regarding the reports that they have submitted in a timely manner.
Laboratory reports will be judged based on technical content as well as professional presentation and appearance
Reports not submitted by 5 PM on the due date will be penalized by a letter grade for each natural day that they are turned in late
Late days policy. Because we all have real lives and in some circumstances we cannot control these events, introducing a certain degree of flexibility may help students deal with unforeseen circumstances and increase the fairness of the grading process for laboratory reports. All students will start the semester with 10 calendar late days. This means that students can turn in late assignments for a total of 10 days before the penalization starts to apply. Students are strongly urged to consider this procedure with extremely care and use these late days wisely in order to prevent an accumulation of penalizations in the late weeks of the semester. The accumulation of late days cannot be carried over other courses or semesters and it is not a reflection on the student's academic ability.
In this course, late days can only be used for Laboratory Reports
For other clarification on this policy, please consult with the instructor.

d) GROUP WORK The laboratory part of this course will be performed by groups of students selected by the instructor. The working groups will be rotated in order to maximize the student's interaction with their peers.

EET 478 Tentative Laboratory

Module	Experiment	Scheduled experiment	Lab report Due date
Module 1: Basic Communications	1.1.- Time characteristics of pulses	9/18/02	10/23/02
	1.2.- Frequency characteristics of pulses	10/2/02
	1.3.- Effects of Band Limiting	10/9/02
Module 2: Basic Digital Modulations	2.1.- Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM)	10/23/02	11/20/02
	2.2.- Spectra of PAM signals	11/06/02
	2.3.- Effects of Nyquist Rate	11/13
Module 3: Digital principles	3.1.- Analog-to-Digital and Digital-to-Analog
Module 3: Digital principles	3.2.- Detection of signals in the presence of noise
Module 4: Advanced Digital Modulations	4.1.- Amplitude Shift Key (ASK) Modulation	11/20
	4.2.- Frequency Shift Key (FSK) Modulation
	4.3.- Binary Phase Shift Key (BPSK) Modulation

The structure of each one of the modules as well as the individual laboratory experiments are subject to change. Regularly consult the course's website for updated information

There are 4 individual laboratory reports for this course

Hyperlink to Laboratory Report Guidelines

RESEARCH PROJECT
Students are required to perform self-directed learning on a specific topic assigned by the instructor, write a short paper and present their findings to the rest of the class. The specific details of this activity will be provided during the semester.

GRADING

3 Partial exams 45 %

Final, comprehensive exam 20 %

Experimental work 15 %

Homework and class participation 10 %

Project presentation 10 %

TOTAL:
100 %

All the partial exams and the final exam are Open Notes, Closed Book. Careful advance planning is necessary by students to succeed. Do not leave everything for the last minute. The reason for the exams being Open Notes is to avoid the need of memorizing formulas and graphs; it is not a substitute for having mastered the material before the exam.

Grading Scale:

100		96		92		87		83		79		75		70		60
	A		A-		B+		B		B-		C+		C		D		F

Revision: August 2002. Albert Lozano

3 Partial exams	45 %
Final, comprehensive exam	20 %
Experimental work	15 %
Homework and class participation	10 %
Project presentation	10 %
TOTAL:	100 %