Exam #2 Study Guide
Fall 1999 (Sec. B, Russell)


DATE AND TIME: Thursday, October 21, 1999 during the usual class time.

SUBJECT MATTER: The exam will cover the lecture topics and homework assignments for Chapter 2, Sections 2.1 through Sections 2.5 inclusive.


General Information


Example Study Topics

  • BITS-BITS-BAUD!!
  • Channel capacity "rule of thumb"
  • More Shannon's Law
  • Channel Information Rate, R
  • The Decibel
  • "Sampling" (A to D conversion)
  • Frequency, Bandwidth, Wavelength
  • More Shannon's Law
  • Data Rate, Information Rate, Baud Rate, etc.
  • Frequency, Bandwidth, Wavelength
  • Transmission Media
  • Radio Transmission
  • Attenuation, Dispersion, Multipath and Fading
  • Lightwave Transmission
  • Attenuation, Dispersion, Multipath and Fading
  • Baseband Transmission (no "carrier")
  • Modulation
  • "RS-232" and the "UART"
  • Telephone System
  • Narrowband ISDN

  • Example Exam Questions

    1.  A physical layer channel has a Shannon channel capacity limit of 20 kbps and a physical channel bandwidth of 5.0 kHz. What signal-to-noise ratio is required to meet this theoretical limit?

    2.  A 12-bit analog-to-digital converter is used to digitize an analog source. The source information bandwidth is 5 kHz. What is the minimum bit rate needed to send this digital information over a noisless channel?

    3.  How much bandwidth (in Hz) is ther in 0.1 micron of sprectrum at a wavelength of 1 micron?

    4.  A QAM constellation has 8 points that can be incribed by two concentric circles. How many different ampitudes does this system send in the physical channel? How many phases?

    5.  Describe how the UART in an RS-232 serial interface knows when to start and stop decoding data pulses (data bits)