Comp 346/488 - Intro to Telecommunications

MWF 1:40-2:30, in 25EP-L09.

Text: Data and Computer Communications, William Stallings, Seventh Edition, Prentice-Hall, 2004, ISBN 0-13-100681-9

General course groundrules are here. Exams will count for between 70% to 80% of your grade, with homework and programs making up the rest. The midterm is scheduled for Monday, March 21 (changed from March 18!); the final will be Tuesday, May 10, at 1:45 (the time from the schedule).

Midterm study guide. Answers are here.

Final exam study guide, now with additional problems.
Answers are here.

Here is my brief doco on spread spectrum, for those missing the 7th edition's chapter 9 on this.

More documentation

• Course Notes
• ATM Forum Traffic Management document, contains definition of GCRA (section 4), but tends to refer to things before they are defined.
• RFC 2205, the defining document for RSVP. Read section 1.

Here is the preliminary version of the Erlang calculation project. It is likely that the analyses will be updated, though the models themselves won't change much. (But note that in Model 3 you measure waiting times rather than blocking times.)

Course Outline:

What is telecommunications? How is it different from data communications?
Characteristics of voice traffic: minimal delay, even smaller variation in delay, reservations
POTS; circuit switching
Connecting exchanges
Long lines, physical transmission issues
Digitization; encoding of voice
TDM, FDM (note that there are some subtle encoding issues)
Basics of packet switching
Basics of routing
Brief review of TCP/IP

Packet switching again
ATM
Congestion management
SONET, optical fiber
Frame Relay, ISDN
Cellular phones

Chapters in book to be read are listed in parenthesis.

1. Introduction, OSI Model, Protocols and Architecture (Ch. 1,Ch. 2)