• Home
• About me
• Publica-
  tions
• IT-Scripts
• Lectures
• Software/
  Manuals
• Links
• Private
•  
•  
• 
  
•  
•  
• 
• 

Principles of Communication Engineering II
Spring 2009

⇒ to time table and download of class material

News

• Grades: You can collect your grades on Monday, 29 June, after 8 AM in ED823 (for Prof. Chen's class) and in ED727 or ED716A (for Prof. Moser's class). For Prof. Moser's class, please be aware that if you have complaints, you need to come to us on the same Monday, 29 June, because on Tuesday, 30 June, the grades will become definite.
• Final Exam: The final exam will take place on
  • Thursday, 25 June, 15:40–18:30 (Note that this is one hour longer than usual!)
  Regulations:
  • open book: any book is allowed
  • not allowed are: any telecommunication devices like mobile phones, any laptop with wireless capabilities, any "friend", or any other help from outside...
  • covered material: everything covered in class; in particular there will be 6 problems: 1 quickies-question, 2 questions about Chapter 6, and one question each about Chapters 7, 8, and 9
• Change of Lab: Note that the lab of one of Prof. Moser's teaching assistants has changed to 716A!
• Mid-Term Exam: The mid-term exam will take place on
  • Thursday, 30 April, 15:40–17:30
  Regulations:
  • open book: any book is allowed
  • not allowed are: any telecommunication devices like mobile phones, any laptop with wireless capabilities, any "friend", or any other help from outside...
  • covered material: Chapter 6 and 7
• Room Change: The room of the English class has been changed to Room 026 at B1 (ED026).
• Wrongly Typed Policy: Note that the quizzes will be closed-book and not as it was wrongly announced open-book.
• Slides of Prof. Chen: The slides used by Prof. Chen in his lectures can be downloaded from http://shannon.cm.nctu.edu.tw/comtheory-II.htm.
• Program Changes: Be aware that some details of the class specification will change as we are working hard to synchronize the English version (Prof. Moser) and the Chinese version (Prof. Chen) of this class. In particular, we will have the same exercises and the same exams on both classes!

Course Objectives

The major goal of Principles of Communication Engineering (I,II) is to teach students about the basic principles underlying the operation and design of a communication system. It is a core course in the Department of Communication Engineering. The course PCE2 will follow approximately the following schedule:

• Passband Digital Transmission (Chapter 6)
• Spread Spectrum Modulation (Chapter 7)
• Multiuser Radio Communications (Chapter 8)
• Fundamental Limits in Information Theory (Chapter 9)
• Error-Control Coding (Chapter 10)

For more detail see the time table below.

We expect a student who finishes the course to be able to understand the basic operating principles of current communication systems or standards. Moreover, we sincerely hope that a student who learns the course material will be equipped with the ability to analyze and design a communication system.

Prerequisites

The following lectures/topics are recommended:

• Signals and Systems (preferably)
• Probability (preferably)
• Principles of Communication Engineering I (preferably)

Instructors

This course is taught in parallel by two teachers.

Prof. Chen Po-Ning	Prof. Stefan M. Moser
Engineering Building IV, Office 831	Engineering Building IV, Office 727
phone: 03-571 21 21 ext. 31670	phone: 03-571 21 21 ext. 54548
e-mail:	e-mail:

Prof. Chen will teach the course in Chinese, while Prof. Moser will teach in English.

Teaching Assistants

Prof. Chen's TAs:

Chang Huei-Ya	Feng Shih-Lun
e-mail:	e-mail:
Engineering Building IV, Office 823 (ED823)	Engineering Building IV, Office 823 (ED823)
phone: 03-571 21 21 ext. 54570	phone: 03-571 21 21 ext. 54570
Office hours: Monday 13:30–15:30	Office hours: Monday 13:30–15:30

Prof. Moser's TAs:

Chen Wei-Hsiang	Tung Yuan-Hao
e-mail:	e-mail:
Engineering Building IV, Office 716A (ED716A)	Engineering Building IV, Office 811 (ED811)
phone: 03-571 21 21 ext. 54630	phone: 03-571 21 21 ext. 54571
	Office hours: Tuesday 18:30–20:00

Time and Place

The course is scheduled for two lectures per week:

• Chinese class:
  • Tuesday, 8:20–10:00 (AB), Engineering Building IV, Room 219 (ED219)
  • Thursday, 15:40–17:40 (GH), Engineering Building IV, Room 219 (ED219)
• English class:
  • Tuesday, 10:10–12:00 (CD), Engineering Building IV, Room 026 at B1 (ED026)
  • Thursday, 15:40–17:30 (GH), Engineering Building IV, Room 026 at B1 (ED026)

The course starts on Tuesday, 24 February, and finishes on Thursday, 25 June.

Office Hours

NCTU requests that every teacher offers two hours per week where students may come to ask questions:

• Prof. Chen: Thursday, 13:30–15:30, Engineering Building IV, Office 831
• Prof. Moser: Thursday, 13:00–15:00, Engineering Building IV, Office 727

However, we would like to encourage you to show up in the teacher's or teaching assistant's office at any time in case you have questions about the class or related subjects. Moreover, we are always available during and after classes.

Textbook

Simon Haykin: "Communication Systems," 4th ed., Wiley, 2001.

Further references and recommended readings:

• Amos Lapidoth: "A Course in Digital Communications," to be published in 2009.
• Robert G. Gallager: "Principles of Digital Communication," Cambridge University Press, 2008.
• Thomas M. Cover and Joy A. Thomas: "Elements of Information Theory," second edition, Wiley, 2006.
• R. E. Ziemer and W. H. Tranter: "Principles of Communications," 5th ed., Wiley, 2002.
• John G. Proakis: "Digital Communications," 4th ed., McGraw-Hill, 2001.

For certain topics there will be additional handouts during classes.

Exercises

Every week, an exercise will be made available online for download. This exercise will consist of several problems that need to be solved at home and handed in during the class of the following week. A model solution will be available online afterwards.

We believe the exercises to be extremely important and crucial to the understanding of the course. They also serve as a preparation for the mid-term and final exams and we therefore highly recommend to solve them. To pass the course you need to hand in at least 10 exercises.

Exams

There will be a mid-term exam (two hours) and a final exam (three hours). The exams are going to be open-book. Details about the covered material in the mid-term exam will be published in due time. The final exam will cover everything taught in class.

Moreover, in regular intervals we will make quizzes about the material taught in the previous weeks. A quiz lasts for 10 minutes only and is closed-book.

Grading

The grade will be an average of

• the homework (20%),
• the 6 quizzes (20%),
• the mid-term exam (20%), and
• the final exam (40%).

The grade of the homework will not be based on the correctness of the answers, but rather on the effort the student shows in trying to solve them. This course is worth 3 credits.

Special Remarks

The course is taught in parallel in two classes: one class is taught in Chinese, one class is taught in English. We will try to keep the courses pretty much synchronized. In particular, all exercises, handouts, the quizzes, the mid-term, and the final exam will be identical in both classes and written in English only.

Time Table

-||-   _|_ _|_     /    __|__   Stefan M. Moser
[-]     --__|__   /__\    /__   Senior Scientist, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
_|_     -- --|-    _     /  /   Adjunct Professor, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
/ \     []  \|    |_|   / \/    Web: https://moser-isi.ethz.ch/