EE 460 is an elective course in the electrical engineering curricula that provides detailed performance analysis of communications systems studied in EE 360/367.
First a review of axiomatic approach to probability theory is presented, including; review of random variables, their statistics, central-limit theorem and correlation function. This is followed by a review of the theory of random processes including: power spectral density, multiple random processes, their transmission through linear systems and band-pass random processes.
Then, behavior of analog systems in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) is analyzed. As a benchmark, signal-to-noise ratio is derived for a baseband system. This is followed by a performance assessment of amplitude modulated and frequency modulated systems and comparison is made to the baseband system performance. Concepts of optimum pre- and de-emphasis systems are explained.
Behavior of digital communication systems in AWGN is studied. This includes: optimum threshold detection and general analysis of optimum binary receivers. Performance of carrier modulation systems: ASK, FSK, PSK and DPSK is derived in terms of average bit error rate (BER) as a function of bit-energy-to-noise density height. M-ary communications systems are analyzed. Synchronization issues are discussed.
This is followed by the theory of optimum signal detection; geometrical representation of signals and signal spaces, Gaussian processes, optimum receiver and equivalent signal sets are illustrated by several examples. BER performance analysis of complex digital modulated systems is demonstrated, using the developed signal space concepts.
Elements of information theory and Shannon capacity theorem for an additive white Gaussian noise channel are discussed.