COURSE OVERVIEW

The course on Communication Systems targets to provide Master Degree Students of Information Engineering with advanced knowledge about telecommunication systems operating on real channels, in particular by emphasizing digital transmission over wireless and mobile channels. 

At the end of the course, the student will acquire a wide range of useful concepts allowing him/her to analyze and design an "end-to-end" transmission system, considering the quality-of-service impairment factors, related both to propagation nonidealities and the presence of distortions in the modulation/demodulation chain. The proposed technologies will be discussed also in the framework of past, present and future standards about wired, wireless and satellite communications. 

COURSE CONTENTS

INFORMATION TRANSMISSION OVER REAL COMMUNICATION CHANNELS (12 hours)

• Fundamentals of data transmission.

• Distortions (and dispersions) in communication systems.

• Digital signaling in the presence of linear distortion: the diversity concept.

• Interference in communication systems.

• Time and frequency-domain equalization.

• Waveform design suitable for data transmission over real channels: DS/SS and OFDM.

DATA TRANSMISSION OVER CABLES (6 hours)

• Dispersion phenomena characterizing cable lines.

• Crosstalk interference and ingress-noise in cable lines.

• Voice band modems (past standards).

• xDSL standard.

DATA TRANSMISSION OVER FIBERS (6 hours)

• Multimodal and chromatic dispersion in optical fibers. Capacity limits of optical fibers.

• Optical fiber transmission with direct OOK modulation and M-ary quadrature modulations.

• Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) over optical fibers.

DATA TRANSMISSION OVER RADIO CHANNELS (16 hours)

• The radio channel: pathloss, atmospheric attenuation, and multipath propagation.

• 2G standards: GSM, IS-95.

• 3G standard: UMTS.

• 4G standard: LTE, LTE-A.

• 5G: a standard or a vision?

• Satellite communications: the state-of-the-art.

EMERGING TOPICS ABOUT COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS (8 hours)

·       Beyond 5G.

·       Software-Defined Radios (SDR) and Cognitive radios.

·       AI and wireless communications.

·       A new vision of Space communication technology.

LECTURE SCHEDULE A.Y. 2023-2024

TBD (second semester)

COURSE MATERIAL AND USEFUL INFORMATION

The didactic material of the course, along with all the useful information concerning the modality of exams, the bibliography is available on the "didatticaonline" portal of UNITN.

COURSE OVERVIEW

This course aims to provide undergraduate students of the course of Informatics, Communications, and Electronic Engineering (ICE) with the theoretical fundamentals on analogic and digital signal processing. At the end of the course, the students will acquire notions about signal representation in the time and frequency domain, fundamentals about processing systems, sampling, quantization and A/D conversion, digital filtering, and digital image processing.

COURSE CONTENTS

Introduction to signals

• What is a signal? Signal sources: physical and electrical.

• Analytical representation of a signal.

• Mono and multi-dimensional signals.

• Signal classification.

• Signal delay, signal statistics (mean, variance, auto-correlation, and cross-correlation.)

• Signal power and energy.

• Mathematical operators working on signals.

Introduction to processing systems

• System definition.

• System formalization in terms of state equations.

• Definition of linear and time-invariant (LTI) systems.

• Impulse response of LTI systems.

• Nonlinear and non-time-invariant systems.

Frequency-representation of signals

• Fourier series for periodic signals: conditions of existence, convergence, properties. The Hermitian symmetry. Examples of spectra computation related to periodic signals. Gibbs effect. The Bessel-Parseval theorem.

• Fourier transforms for non-periodic signals: conditions of existence, convergence, properties. The Hermitian symmetry. The duality theorem. Noticeable Fourier transform. The convolution theorem. Fourier transforms of periodic signals, the Poisson formula. The Rayleigh theorem.

Frequency-representation of LTI systems

• Frequency response of an LTI system: amplitude, phase, and group delay response of an LTI system. Power gain of an LTI system.

• Introduction to filtering: ideal low-pass, high-pass, and band-pass filtering.

• Signal distortion and equalization principles.

A/D conversion of signals

• Sampling operation: ideal sampling, the Nyquist theorem about ideal sampling, aliasing, real sampling (sample and hold S/H, chopper.)

• Quantization of signals: uniform quantization, quantization noise, signal-to-noise ratio analysis, non-uniform sampling.

• Pulse-Code Modulation (PCM): binary coding, Delta modulation, Differential Pulse-Code Modulation (DPCM).

Introduction to numerical filtering

• Signal properties in the discrete-time domain.

• Numerical systems and discrete convolution.

• Numerical filters: IIR and FIR.

• Some notes about nonlinear numerical filters.

• Numerical signals and systems in the frequency domain: the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT).

• Multidimensional numerical signal processing

LECTURE SCHEDULE A.Y. 2023-2024

• WED 10.30-13.30 p.m. (room A.203), THU 8.30 a.m. -10.30 p,m. (room A.110).

COURSE MATERIAL AND USEFUL INFORMATION

The didactic material of the course is available on the "didatticaonline" portal of UNITN.