Signal Processing for Communication Systems
Mathuranathan Key focus: Euclidean & Hamming distances are used to measure similarity or dissimilarity between two sequences. Used in Soft & Hard decision decoding. Distance is a measure that indicates either similarity or dissimilarity between two words. Given a pair of words a=(a0,a1, … ,an-1) and b=(b0,b1,…,bn-1) , there are variety of ways one can characterize … Read more
Key focus: Window function smooths the observed signal over the edges. Analysis of some important parameters to help select the window for an application. Spectral leakage As we know, the DFT operation can be viewed as processing a signal through a set of filter banks with bandwidth Δf centered on the bin (frequency) of interest … Read more
Key focus: Equivalent noise bandwidth (ENBW), is the bandwidth of a fictitious brick-wall filter that allows same amount of noise as a window function. Learn how to calculate ENBW in applications involving window functions and FFT operation. FFT and spectral leakage As we know, the DFT operation can be viewed as processing a signal through … Read more
The Parseval’s theorem (a.k.a Plancherel theorem) expresses the energy of a signal in time-domain in terms of the average energy in its frequency components. Suppose if the x[n] is a discrete-time sequence of complex numbers of length N : xn={x0,x1,…,xN-1}, its N-point discrete Fourier transform (DFT)[1] : Xk={X0,X1,…,XN-1} is given by The inverse discrete Fourier … Read more
In wireless environments, transmitted signal may be subjected to multiple scatterings before arriving at the receiver. This gives rise to random fluctuations in the received signal and this phenomenon is called fading. The scattered version of the signal is designated as non line of sight (NLOS) component. If the number of NLOS components are sufficiently … Read more
Key focus: Discuss statistical measures for stochastic signals : mean, variance, skewness, kurtosis, histogram, scatterplot, cross-correlation and auto-correlation. Deterministic and stochastic signals A deterministic signal is exactly predictable for the given time span of interest. It could be expressed using analytic form (example: x(t) = sin (2 π fc t) ). Many of the signals … Read more
Key focus: Simulate bit error rate performance of Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK) modulation over AWGN channel using complex baseband equivalent model in Python & Matlab. Why complex baseband equivalent model The passband model and equivalent baseband model are fundamental models for simulating a communication system. In the passband model, also called as waveform simulation … Read more
The phase transition properties of the different variants of QPSK schemes and MSK, are easily investigated using constellation diagram. Let’s demonstrate how to plot the signal space constellations, for the various modulations used in the transmitter. Typically, in practical applications, the baseband modulated waveforms are passed through a pulse shaping filter for combating the phenomenon … Read more
Key focus: Shown with examples: let’s estimate and plot the probability density function of a random variable using Python’s Matplotlib histogram function. Generation of random variables with required probability distribution characteristic is of paramount importance in simulating a communication system. Let’s see how we can generate a simple random variable, estimate and plot the probability … Read more
Markov chains are useful in computing the probability of events that are observable. However, in many real world applications, the events that we are interested in are usually hidden, that is we don’t observe them directly. These hidden events need to be inferred. For example, given a sentence in a natural language we only observe the … Read more