CCE 411: Digital Communication Systems Mustafa El Halabi, Ph.D.

(Beirut)

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER AND COMMUNICATIONS ENGINEERING

CCE 411: Digital Communication Systems

Fall Term 2019-2020
INSTRUCTOR Mustafa El Halabi, Ph.D.
Email: mhalabi@aust.edu.lb
Website: https://mustafa-halabi.appspot.com/

CLASS HOURS MW 3:30 pm - 4:45 pm

Room: 403, Block: B

OFFICE HOURS T-TH 11:00 am - 12:30 pm

Otherwise by appointment
Room: Instructors’ Office, Block A

PROBLEM SOLVING CCE 201P: Problem Solving in Digital Communication Systems

(0 Cr.)
Wednesday 12:30 pm – 1:45 pm (ATTENDANCE IS MANDATORY)
Room:601, Block: M
Instructor: Mustafa Halabi, Ph.D.

COURSE OBJECTIVES
This course offers an introduction to the fundamental concepts of digital communication
systems. The class material emphasizes the unifying principle of communication theory, taking
a mathematical approach to system design. Applications to the design of current
communication systems will be discussed to further student understanding. The main topics in
this course include analog communication, noise in analog communications, quantization,
pulse code modulation, source coding, channel coding, detection in AWGN channels, optimum
error performance, communication through band-limited channels, inter-symbol-interference
(ISI), eye patterns, and equalization.

COURSE PREREQUISITES CCE 401: Communication Systems

CCE 401L: Communication Systems Laboratory

PREREQUISITES BY TOPICS
The student should have a basic background in analog communications, signal processing,
probability, and random processes.

COURSE CREDITS 3 Credit Hours

INSTRUCTION TECHNIQUE
Lectures will be used predominantly. These will be supported by problem sets and projects.

REQUIRED TEXT

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CCE 411: Digital Communication Systems Mustafa El Halabi, Ph.D. (Beirut)

 John G. Proakis and Masoud Salehi. Digital Communications. McGraw-Hill

Science/Engineering/Math; 5th edition, 2007.

REFERENCES
 Simon Haykin. Digital Communications. Wiley; 1988.

GRADE DISTRIBUTION
This course involves a number of didactic activities, ranging from lectures, project(s), weekly
homework, weekly quizzes, 3 exams, and a final exam. All of these attributes of the course are
intended to help the student in developing his/her understanding of the material covered in
CCE 411 and in providing the department and the course instructor with information on how
the student is performing. Consequently, all of these activities are considered to be vital and
will be taken into consideration while assigning grades at the end of the term. When the
student is being assigned a course grade, it is imperative that this grade accurately reflects the
student’s level of achievement and his/her mastery of the material covered in CCE 411. An
approximate breakdown of the weighting that will be used in making this assessment is as
follows:

Lab LAB 25%

Class Attendance ATT 05%
Homework HWK 10%
Quizzes QZS 05%
Class Exams
Exam 1 EX1 15%
Exam 2 EX2 15%
Exam 3 EX2 15%
Final Exam (Written Exam) FIN 25%

Note: Two out of the three exams will be counted towards the final course grade based on the
highest grades attained. No make-up exams are allowed. Late assignments will be dealt with
according to the distributed course rules and regulations, which are governed by the
Department of Computer and Communications Engineering. Under severe conditions, only the
Final Exam is allowed to be petitioned; however, students have to realize that in the event that
a make-up Final Exam is granted, it would be unjust that the grantee becomes privileged over
his/her fellow colleagues in terms of extra-time to prepare for the exam and in developing an
idea about the contents of the exam. Accordingly, the make-up Final Exam will carry an
increased level of difficulty of at least 20% from the regular exam.

LEARNING OUTCOMES
At the end of the course, the student should be able to:

 Describe the main building blocks of a typical digital communication system

 Describe the different techniques involved in baseband pulse modulation and
demodulation
 Describe different source coding algorithms and the applications of each
 Describe the different techniques involved in band-limited communication
 Describe inter-symbol-interference, synchronization, and equalization

ATTENDANCE

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CCE 411: Digital Communication Systems Mustafa El Halabi, Ph.D. (Beirut)

For legitimate reasons only, a student is allowed to absent him/herself for a maximum of six
contact hours1 from the course lectures; i.e., four M-W lectures. However, any absence of
more than one session will be counted toward the 5% evaluation of the course grade. Absences
beyond the specified maximum limit will result in an automatic AW in the course and possibly
other disciplinary measures. An unexcused absence from an exam will result in a zero on that
exam. Should the student be absent from a lecture during which an assignment is due, it is the
duty of the student to make certain that the homework assignment is handed in on time.
Failure to do so will incur a penalty on that assignment’s grade.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
The student should get familiar with the Course Rules and Regulations of the Department of
Computer and Communications Engineering at AUST. These are compiled and distributed to
the student at the beginning of every academic term. In particular, the student should be aware
that plagiarism, abuse of laboratory facilities, and other sorts of academic dishonesty are not
tolerated and can result in unsympathetic penalties.

The Department of Computer and Communications Engineering (CCE) fully acknowledges the
potential significance of students studying together. In this sense, the CCE Department does
not have any reservation to this kind of collaboration, as long as all contestants are involved in
all facets of the work, and not with each individual contributing to a fraction of the assignment.
Specifically, when a student submits an assignment with his/her name on it, the CCE
Department takes it for granted that the details presented in the assignment are entirely the
student’s own work, and that this student has substantially participated in the creation of this
work. If a portion of the work has been conceived by collaborative work, that section should
be highlighted and the names of the students involved in this collaboration should be listed
next to that section.

Note: No snacks or beverages, including water bottles, are allowed in the classroom. The
use of cellphones is prohibited.

COURSE OUTLINE BY TOPIC

The day-to-day topics to be covered in the table below may be adjusted as the subject proceeds,
examination dates are tentative and problem set due dates are unlikely to change.
Week No.
 Pulse Code Modulation 1-4
- Analog pulse modulation
- Quantization
- Companding/Expanding
- Pulse-code modulation
- Linear prediction
- DPCM, DM
- Time division multiplexing (TDM)

EXAM No. 1: Wednesday, November 6, 2019 5

 INFORMATION THEORY 5-7

- Measures of information, entropy, mutual information, entropy
chain rule, Shannon Channel Coding Theorem
- Capacity Calculations
- Shannon Source Coding Theorem, Huffman Codes
- Tunstall Codes, Lempel-Ziv Universal Compression Algorithm

1
One contact hour is equivalent to a 50-minute lecture.

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CCE 411: Digital Communication Systems Mustafa El Halabi, Ph.D. (Beirut)

EXAM No. 2: Wednesday, November 27, 2019 8

 RECEIVER DESIGN FOR BASEBAND COMMUNICATIONS 8-10

- Hypothesis testing, probability of error

- ML and MAP Detection
- Matched Filter Receiver
- Optimal Filtering, Minimum probability of error

EXAM No. 3: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 10

 BANDPASS COMMUNICATION 11-16

- Bandpass modulation schemes: ASK, PSK, QPSK, FSK
- M-ary Digital Modulation schemes
- Discrete Data Detection
- The Vector AWGN Channel

Lab Projects Expo: Thursday & Friday, January 16 & 17, 2020

READING PERIOD 16 Sa 01/25/2020

S 01/26/2020

FINAL EXAM WEEK M 17-18

01/27/2020
T 02/04/2020
________________________________________________________________________________________

DEVIATIONS: Minor deviations from the syllabus are a normal part of any adaptive teaching and learning
process
DISCLAIMER: Changes may be performed to the above syllabus without any prior notification.

Copyright © 2015-2020 American University of Science & Technology - Department of Computer and Communications Engineering.
All rights reserved.

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