Welcome to the course!

This course aims at introducing advanced topics in digital communications and providing students with up-to-date knowledge of the techniques used in modern communication systems and the principles underlying their design. The course covers three main areas, time-dispersive channels, advanced channel coding, and wireless transmission, and lays the foundation for understanding current and future communication standards. The content of the course is organized as follows:

Time-Dispersive Channels

Lecture 1: Channel model, intersymbol interference (ISI), and pulse shaping for ISI avoidance
Lecture 2: Optimal equalization with maximum-likelihhod sequence estimator; Viterbi algorithm and performance.
Lecture 3: Low-complexity equalization with linear and decision-feedback equalizers
Lecture 4: Optimal signaling with OFDM and channel capacity

Advanced Channel Coding

Lecture 5: LDPC codes
Lecture 6: Turbo codes and maximum a posteriori decoding (BCJR algorithm)
Lecture 7: Serially concatenated codes, bit-interleaved coded modulation BICM, and EXIT charts
Lecture 8: Polar codes

Wireless Transmission

Lecture 9: Fading and diversity
Lecture 10: Spread spectrum communications
Lecture 11: Space-time communication; capacity and receiver architectures

Review

Lecture 12: Summary of the course content and outlook

Schedule and Meeting Rooms

The schedule for lectures and tutorials in the course can be found here.

The first lecture will be held in the meeting room on the 8th floor, Osquldas väg 10.

All remaining lectures and tutorials will be held in the conference room "SIP" on floor 3, Osquldas väg 10, Department of Information Science and Engineering.

New Course Design!

In this course, we use flipped classroom to maximize your learning experience. For every lecture, video lectures are available that allow the students to study the course content at their pace. Quizzes after each video lecture provide the students with instant feedback on their learning progress. In class, concept questions, examples, and simple problems are discussed in order to deepen the understanding. The lecture are accompanied by traditional problem solving tutorials based on old exam problems, and for each of the three main areas of the course, a small Matlab project is provided that is solved in group work.

Course Material

For each lecture, slide material is available that has been developed based on the following text books over the years:

U. Madhow, Fundamentals of Digital Communication
J.G. Proakis, Digital Communications

In addition to the lecture material, recap material will be made available. The purpose of this material is to help students to get a quick entrance to the course.

The course material (slides, video, and quizzes) will be provided in three modules in Canvas, dedicated to the three main areas of the course, time-dispersive channels, modern channel coding, and wireless communication. Another modul will host the recap material as well as old exam papers.

Students who interested in advanced reading material may enjoy the following books that partly are used in our PhD-level course:

S.J. Johnson, Iterative Error Correction
E. Biglieri, Coding for Wireless Channels
D. Tse and P. Viswanath, Fundamentals of Wireless Communication

Intended learning outcomes

After this course, you will be able to:

Identify and describe properties and limiting effects of wireless communication channels.
Identify and describe modern digital communication techniques with applications to wireless transmission like multi-carrier transmission and OFDM, spread-spectrum techniques, modern coding techniques, CDMA and multiuser systems, multiple-antenna systems, diversity, and receiver architectures (e.g., equalization, iterative processing, multi-user processing).
Identify and describe standardized technologies in the field, in particular 3G, 4G and different WLAN standards.
Motivate the fact that the implementation and development of modern communication technology, in particular in wireless communications, requires mathematical modeling and problem solving.
Apply mathematical modeling to problems in wireless digital communications, and explain how this is used to analyze and synthesize methods and algorithms within the field.
Formulate a mathematical model which is applicable and relevant in the case of a given problem.
Use a mathematical model to solve a given engineering problem in the field, and analyze the result and its validity.

Students who will have acquired a higher grade will be able to:

Compare different digital commnuication techniques and judge their applicability and performance in different application scenarios.
Formulate advanced mathematical models which are applicable and relevant in the case of a given problem. When explicit assumptions are missing, the student should be able to judge and compare different possibilities and make own relevant assumptions.
Use a mathematical model to solve a given demanding engineering problem in the field, and analyze the result and its validity.

Examination

We will have a written 5h exam (grade scale: A, B, C, D, E, FX, F) at the end of the course. Each exam contains of five problems, each worth five credits. In order to pass the exam with grade E or higher, 4 (four) out of 5 (five) exam problems have to be passed with 2 (two) or more credits. Additional bonus points (up to 4 credits) can be obtained from the Matlab projects.

The following scale will be used for grading the exams (points include bonus points):

Credits on the exam	0-10.5	11-11.5	12-14.5	15-17.5	18-20.5	21-23.5	24-25
Final grade	F	Fx	E	D	C	B	A

Recommended Prerequisites

EQ2310, Digital communications or similar.