Introduction to Digital Communication

Digital communication is a rather unique field in engineering in which theoretical ideas have had an extraordinary impact on the design of actual systems. The course provides a basic understanding of the analysis and design of digital communication systems, building on various ideas from probability theory, stochastic processes, linear algebra and Fourier analysis. Topics include: detection and probability of error for binary and M-ary signals (PAM, QAM, PSK), receiver design and sufficient statistics, controlling the spectrum and the Nyquist criterion, bandpass communication and up/down conversion, design trade-offs: rate, bandwidth, power and error probability, coding and decoding (block codes, convolutional coding and Viterbi decoding). Prerequisites: 179 or 261, and 178 or 278