EE 5370/7370 C OMMUNICATION AND I NFORMATION S YSTEMS

Homework 6 Professor Dunham

1 October 2019 Due: 8 October 2019

Read Proakis and Salehi Text: Chapter 5.

1. Three car brands A, B and C have 10%, 25% and 65% of the market share, respectively. The
probabilities that a car will need a major repair during its first year of purchase are 5%,10%
and 20%, for the brands respectively.

(a) What is the probability that a car will need a major repair during its first year of pur-
chase?
(b) If a car needs a major repair during its first year of purchase, what is the probability
that is was made by manufacturer B?

2. A coin is flipped four times and the random variable X denotes the total number of heads
that show up. The probability that a head appears on one flip of the coin is p and each coin
toss is independent of the other coin tosses.

(a) What values can the random variable X take?

(b) What is the probability mass function of the random variable X?
(c) Derive and plot the CDF of X.
(d) What is the probability that X exceeds 2?

3. The noise voltage in an electric circuit can be modeled as a Gaussian random variable with
a mean equal to 0 and a variance equal to 4 × 10−8 .

(a) What is the probability that the value of the noise exceeds 2 × 10−4 ? What is the
probability that it exceeds 4 × 10−4 ? What is the probability that the noise value is
between -5 × 10−5 and 10−4 ?
(b) Given that the noise is greater than -1 × 10−4 , what is the probability that it exceeds
1.5 × 10−4 ?
(c) The noise passes through a half-wave rectifier with characteristics
(
x x>0
g(x) = .
0 else

Find the probability density function (pdf) of the rectified noise.

(d) Find the expected value of the rectified noise in the previous part.
(e) Now assume that the noise passes through a full-wave rectifier described by g(x) = |x|.
Find the pdf of the rectified noise in this case. What is the expected value of the output
noise in this case?

1
4. Proakis and Salehi 5.18.

5. Let X and Y be independent Gaussian random variables, each distributed according to N (0, σ 2 ).
Define Z = 2X +Y and W = Y − X.

(a) Find the joint PDF of Z and W .

(b) Find the covariance of Z and W .

6. (EE 7370 Only) Proakis and Salehi 5.27.