2020-09-08
There will be no labs the first week.
2020-09-14
There is no lab session on Monday September 14 since you don't have the first set of lab instructions yet (and we haven't covered any material yet).
2020-09-19
Please use the first workstation on the list below for your labs in SW1-3575. If one of the instruments does not work, try the second workstation. If that one is also not functional, please try any of the other ones in the second column. For example, Mohammmed would first try workstation 3575-1, and then 3575-10 if there was something wrong with 3575-1.
If something isn't working please report it on the Equipment Status Discussion Topic workstation status page on the Telecom Wiki so we can fix it (this may require an instructor coming in to restart an instrument so it might take a couple of days). Thanks!
| Student | Primary Workstation | Backup Workstation |
| Mohammed | 1 | 10 |
| Tuan | 2 | 15 |
| Neal | 3 | 11 |
| Kyle | 4 | 16 |
| Amrit | 5 | 12 |
| Thomas | 6 | 12 |
| Parnia | 7 | 13 |
| Emmanuel | 8 | 13 |
| Charles | 9 | 14 |
2020-09-20
This is the tentative (subject to change) schedule for the course:
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Day: |
Mon |
Tue |
Wed |
Thu |
Fri |
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Lectures: |
10:30 |
13:30 |
|
11:30 |
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Lab Sets: |
3L |
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Sep 07 |
holiday |
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Sep 14 |
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Sep 21 |
L |
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Q1 |
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Sep 28 |
L |
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Oct 05 |
L |
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Q2 |
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Oct 12 |
holiday |
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MT1 |
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Oct 19 |
L |
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Q3 |
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Oct 26 |
L |
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Nov 02 |
L |
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Q4 |
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Nov 09 |
L |
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holiday |
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MT2 |
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Nov 16 |
WD |
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Q5 |
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Nov 23 |
L |
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Nov 30 |
L |
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Dec 07 |
exams |
exams |
exams |
exams |
exams |
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L=Lab Session (8:30), Qn = Quiz n, MTn=Midterm n, 3:30 to 5:20 PM |
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WD: Withdrawal deadline. |
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2020-09-23
I've uploaded the final version of the Lab 1 instructions. The scripts have also been updated. Because of the delay in providing these materials, I have postponed the due date for Lab 1 to October 1.
2020-09-30
You can look up your marks in the marks file under Content / Course Information. You'll need to supply your ID (A0 number) and a password that is available from the Grades link on the course home page. The marking scheme is also available.
2020-10-05
The AWG channel 1 output has been connected to the 'scope channel 1 and the serial ports on the lab PCs. The DMMs have been disconnected. This should allow you to complete labs 2 and 3. As of 4 PM Monday all workstations are working.
2020-10-09
Quiz 2 has been marked and the solutions posted. The min/mean/media/max marks were 4.5, 6.8, 7 and 9 out of 9.
2020-10-16
The first midterm was marked. The distribution of marks is shown below. Please let me know if you have any questions about the marking.
2020-10-19
The awgload.py utility does not work properly for files larger than 16k samples. If you want to complete the lab before I fix the script, you'll need to modify the linecodes.m script to generate less than 16k samples. For example, set n=1500 bits and ns=8 samples/bit (note that the 4b/5b encoding increases the number of bits by 25%).
In addition, the awgload.py script assumes the values in the CSV file range from -1 to +1 while the linecodes.m script generates values between 0 and 1. So you will also need to modify linecodes.m to scale values between 0 and 1 to values between -1 and 1 before writing them to the csv file. You can do this by multiplying by 2 and subtracting one.
2020-10-19
The awgload.py script has been fixed so that it can load any number of samples. The linecodes.m script has been updated to write values from -1 to 1 instead of 0 to 1 for compatibility with the awgload.py script.
2020-10-21
I've added a couple of examples of Gaussian noise probability calculations involving two thresholds to the "Answers to Exercises" page.
2020-10-26
Workstations 1 through 9 and 16 have been configured for Lab 5. Workstations 10 through 15 are still set up for Lab 4.
2020-11-13
The second midterm exam has been marked and the minimum, mean, median and maximum marks were 65, 91, 94 and 100% respectively. The solutions are available under Cotent/Quizzes and Exams. Your marks and the marking scheme are available on the course web site under Content/Course Information.
The distribution of the final marks is shown below:
2020-11-13
Since we are behind in the lecture material but ahead on the labs, I'll use this Monday's lab to try to catch up with the lecture material. Hopefully that will get us to the point where we can continue with the last lab (an Ethernet transmitter) next week.
2020-11-19
Update: I've been told that the majority of the students would like the quiz postponed and no one has objected so we will postpone the quiz until next Friday.
If we have Quiz 5 tomorrow, the questions would be on FEC (Lecture 8). The questions would be similar to the exercises and would cover: computing checksums and parity bits, block code sizes, computing Hamming distance, computing the minimum distance of a code, minimum-distance decoding, computing coding gain, computing convolutional code encoding, puncturing, block interleaving and minimum-distance decoding of Reed-Solomon codes.
However, I've been asked to postpone Quiz 5. I would be OK with postponing the quiz until next Friday, considering it's only been one week since the midterm exam and I've been told you've had several in-person labs and midterm exams this week. Let me know if you have any objections to postponing the quiz.
2020-11-25
The complete version of Lab 8 is now available along with the two utilities needed to complete this lab (etherlab.exe and etherload.py both available in the ELEX 3521 Shareout folder).
Unfortunately, while developing this lab I managed to "hang up" four AWG's and one of the lab PCs. I will try to have them reset soon, but in the meantime check the workstation status web page and use one of the workstations that's still working and configured for Lab 8.
2020-11-27
Although we have no more labs, we still have some useful material to cover: Ethernet, network protocols, duplexing and ARQ. And we only have three more lectures left.
I think a couple of more hours of lectures would allow us to cover the material a bit more slowly and hopefully leave some time for review. So I'll be using the lab session on Monday from 8:30 to 10:20 to cover some of the above lecture material (or to help with Lab 8 if you need it).
2020-12-07
I've uploaded a Summary of Learning Objectives which is a list of the learning objectives from each set of lecture notes.
Reminder: the final exam will be Tuesday, December 8 at 9:30.
2020-12-08
The final exam has been marked. The answers and the marking scheme have been posted. The unofficial final marks have been calculated.
Please check your marks and let me know if you have any questions.
The mean/median/maximum marks for the final exam were 36.7, 39 and 43 out of 46. For the course they were 80, 88 and 99%.
The distribution of the (passing) final exam marks was:
The distribution of the (passing) unofficial course final marks is:
