FUNDAMENTALS OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS

The course aims to provide the basic knowledge concerning the analog and digital techniques for information transmission.

The course, which consists of 79 hours of teaching and exercises, is delivered in co-teaching (6 + 3 CFU). The 3 CFUs concern in particular section n. 9 of the program.

1 Introduction

Organization of the course, the history of TLC, general description of a communication system, analog and digital sources, transducers. Telephone signal features. Transducers. Definitions of bit-rate, SNR, BER, SER. Performance parameters of a communication system. Audio frequencies, sound pressure, distribution of telephone signal amplitude, loss of hearing sensitivity.

2 Communication channels

Ideal, perfect, linear and continuous, linear and non-permanent, non-linear channel. Harmonic distortion coefficient. Equalization. Noisy channels. Frequency division multiplexing (FDM). Guard band. Emphasis and de-emphasis filters. Exercises.

3 Information Theory

Measure of information and entropy. Discrete sources and examples. Source coding: codes properties, length of a code, block coding, Gray, Shannon-Fano, Huffman codes. Exercises.

4 PCM and line coding

A/D conversion. Sampling. Uniform and non-uniform quantization. PCM, A and μ law. ITU-T and ETSI voice coding standard. Transmission and regeneration of PCM signals over noisy channels. Main binary line codes. Multilevel coding. Exercises.

5 Channel coding

Block codes. Code rate. Coding delay. Linear and systematic code. Generator matrix. Repetition and disparity code. Weight and Hamming distance. Decoding delay. Interleaver. Convolutional codes.

6 Noisy quadripoles

Equivalent noise bandwidth, equivalent noise temperature, noise figure. Exercises.

7 Modulation and transmission of analog signals

Amplitude modulation and demodulation: DSB, SSB, VSB and AM; angular modulation: FM and PM; effect of noise; modulators and demodulators; modulation techniques comparison.

8 Baseband and passband digital transmission

Binary and M-ary PAM baseband transmission. Numerical modulation: ASK, FSK, PSK, QAM, OFDM.

9. Telecommunication networks and systems

Network systems: General information on telecommunication networks and the Internet; network protocols and services; protocol architectures; multiplexing and switching techniques; network equipment and infrastructures; error and flow control; multiple access techniques; routing functions; mobility management.

[1] K. Sam, Shanmugam “Digital and Analog Communication Systems”, John Wiley & Sons.
[2] Couch Leon, “Fondamenti di Telecomunicazioni”, Apogeo Education, 2002.
[3] S. Haykin, M. Moher “Introduzione alle telecomunicazioni analogiche e digitali”, Casa Editrice Ambrosiana, 2007

[4] J. Kurose, K. Ross "Reti di calcolatori e Internet", Pearson
[5] Notes of the teacher