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Unit of study_
ELEC3505: Communications
2025 unit information
This is an intermediate unit of study in telecommunications following on the general concepts studied in earlier units such as Signal and Systems and leading on to more advanced units such as Digital Communication Systems. Student will learn how to critically design and evaluate digital communication systems including the elements of a digital transmission system, understand the limitations of communications channels, different analog and digital modulation schemes and reasons to use digital techniques instead of analog, and the effect of noise and interference in performance of the digital communication systems. On completion of this unit, students will have sufficient knowledge of the physical channel of a telecommunications network to approach the study of higher layers of the network stack. The following topics are covered. Introduction to communications systems, random signals and stochastic process, components, signals and channels, sampling, quantization, pulse amplitude modulation (PAM), pulse code modulation (PCM), quantization noise, time division multiplexing, delta modulation. Digital communications: baseband signals, digital PAM, eye diagram, equalization, correlative coding, error probabilities in baseband digital transmission, bandpass transmission, digital amplitude shift keying (ASK), frequency shift keying (FSK), phase shift keying (PSK) and quadrature shift keying (QPSK), error probabilities in bandpass digital transmission, a case study of digital communication systems. Introduction to information theory: fundamental limits in communications, channel capacity and channel coding, signal compression.
Unit details and rules
Managing faculty or University school:
Engineering
| Study level | Undergraduate |
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| Academic unit | School of Electrical and Computer Engineering |
| Credit points | 6 |
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Prerequisites:
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ELEC2302 |
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Corequisites:
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None |
| Prohibitions:
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None |
| Assumed knowledge:
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None |
At the completion of this unit, you should be able to:
- LO1. work in a team, demonstrating capacity to manage complex roles and responsibilities, drawing on and optimizing the contribution of others towards the timely delivery of specific engineering tasks in a laboratory environment
- LO2. design digital communication systems by applying principles and techniques developed in the material presented
- LO3. demonstrate an understanding of the physical channel of telecommunications networks to the extent of the information presented throughout the course
- LO4. demonstrate an understanding of the effect of noise and interference in the performance of digital communication systems
- LO5. demonstrate an understanding of professional practice by differentiating between theory and real communication systems, identifying economic, social and sustainability standards employed
- LO6. evaluate digital communication systems including the elements of a digital transmission system using knowledge of concepts, principles and techniques developed throughout the course
- LO7. recognise the limitations of communications channels, as well as different analog and digital modulation schemes and explain the reasons to use digital techniques instead of analog.
Unit availability
This section lists the session, attendance modes and locations the unit is available in. There is a unit outline for each of the unit availabilities, which gives you information about the unit including assessment details and a schedule of weekly activities.
The outline is published 2 weeks before the first day of teaching. You can look at previous outlines for a guide to the details of a unit.
| Session | MoA ? | Location | Outline ? |
|---|---|---|---|
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Semester 1 2025
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Normal day | Camperdown/Darlington, Sydney |
Outline unavailable
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Modes of attendance (MoA)
This refers to the Mode of attendance (MoA) for the unit as it appears when you’re selecting your units in Sydney Student. Find more information about modes of attendance on our website.
