Comp 346/446 - Intro to Telecommunications

Summer 2015: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6:00-9:15, LT 410

Text: there is no official primary text. The basic networking concepts are covered in my free online book, An Introduction to Computer Networks. Additional online readings will be assigned as necessary.

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 will be  Thursday, July 23. The final will be Thursday, August 6, at our usual class time.

Assignments

Miscellaneous files

• .wav files. These include the original 16-bit cantdo.wav (Douglas Rain), and also low- and high-pass filtering applied with cutoffs of 400, 600, 900, 1200, and 1875 Hz.
• demo spreadsheets

More links:

• A good exposition of the Strowger switch
• Notes on CSMA by Jeff Andrews
• ATM Forum Traffic Management document, contains definition of GCRA (section 4). Tends to refer to things before they are defined.
• Tectronix Sonet Primer
• Fundamentals of DS3
• Here's a Lily Tomlin bit (alas, deleted!) on what life was like under the telephone-company monopoly.
• Lily Tomlin calling Mr Veedul about his bill

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
Phone switches; phone features; Asterisk
TDM, FDM (note that there are some subtle encoding issues)
SONET
Basics of packet switching
Basics of routing and TCP/IP
ATM
Congestion management
Cellular phones
Wireless data
CDMA/GSM/LTE

Approximate class-by-class outline

1:   Telecom basics, Asterisk intro
2:   Network basics, digitized sound
3:   More PBX features, Digital signal processing
4:   Basics of transmission
5:   Transmission encoding and modulation; Multiplexing (analog and digital)
6:   DS-lines and SONET; call setup; trunk reservations; trunk routing; switching, Clos switching; SS7
7:   SIP, SDP, RTP, RTCP
8:   Intro to virtual circuits and ATM
9:   Cellular, CDMA, fading
10: More ATM, with token-bucket filtering
11: real-time Internet protocols (RSVP, DS)
12: final exam