Many textbooks today treat the basic topics in analog and digital communication systems,
including coding and decoding algorithms and modulation and demodulation
techniques. Most of these textbooks focus, by necessity, on the theory that underlies
the design and performance analysis of the various building blocks, such as coders,
decoders, modulators, and demodulators, that constitute the basic elements of a communications
system. Relatively few of the textbooks, especially those written for undergraduates,
include applications that motivate students.
SCOPE OF THE BOOK
The objective of this book is to serve as a companion or supplement to any of the
comprehensive textbooks in communication systems. The book provides a variety of
exercises that may be solved on a computer (generally, a personal computer is sufficient)
using the popular student edition of MATLAB. We intend the book to be used
primarily by senior-level undergraduate students and graduate students in electrical engineering,
computer engineering, and computer science. This book will also prove
useful to practicing engineers who wish to learn specific MATLAB applications for
communication systems. We assume that the reader is familiar with the fundamentals
of MATLAB. We do not cover those topics because several tutorial books and manuals
on MATLAB are available.
By design, the treatment of the communications theory topics is brief. We provide
the motivation and a short introduction to each topic, establish the necessary notation,
and then illustrate the basic notions through an example. The primary text and the instructor
are expected to provide the required depth for the topics treated. For example,
we introduce the matched filter and the correlator and assert that these devices result
in the optimum demodulation of signals corrupted by additive white Gaussian noise
(AWGN), but we do not provide a proof of this assertion. Such a proof generally is
given in most core textbooks on communication systems.
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