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This course provides a comprehensive review of the fundamentals of telecommunication technology to act as the basis for effective management of telecommunications technology. The importance of bandwidth, communications reliability and networks are emphasized. Topics covered include the nature of information sources and the coding of their outputs; the nature of channels and their characteristics; the nature of signals, their behaviour in physical channels, and their generation and reception; the nature of interconnection, networks, signalling and switching; the role of standards and regulation; current important technologies; and the thrust of new and future technology.
This course is intended to provide students in the Telecommunications Technology Management program with a broad, integrated understanding of the fundamentals of telecommunications technology. The emphasis will be on developing a mature perspective of telecommunications science and technology from which the salient properties of new and competing systems and technologies may be analyzed and understood.
The specific objectives of the course are to:
Telecommunications spans a tremendous breadth of science and technology, theory and practice, application and impact. While telecommunications has immense potential for increased capacity and new services, it is subject to fundamental physical and technological limits, regardless of how well it is managed. Thus, it is essential that the subject of telecommunications technology itself be part of any graduate program that purports to prepare students to manage it.
Telecommunications systems are limited by physical, technological, economical, and societal factors. The emphasis in this course is on the physical and technological, although the others are not be ignored. The physical factors include the environment in which telecommunications takes place, while the technological include both the means and the processes of the telecommunications systems. The limiting factors affect the processes of information generation, distribution and use and, thus, all aspects of telecommunications.
The essential knowledge to be developed in this course on Telecommunications Technology is an understanding of:
The components of the technology to be understood include
The course will be offered as a series of lectures, accompanied by assigned readings and a number of assignments. The lectures will review the basic characteristics of telecommunication systems: sources, channels and networks; and then present an overview of specific topics of current interest.
Students in a graduate course may expect to spend approximately three hours reading, study and writing for every hour spent in the classroom.
The course, being a comprehensive survey of telecommunications technology, is based on the complete telecommunications literature: texts, handbooks, papers and articles. While many excellent texts cover various parts of the course, few cover its breadth. Students are expected to refer to the literature to supplement the lecture material, for additional reading and for broader deeper and coverage of any particular subject. Thus, no specific textbook has been selected for the course.
Several references are listed
in the appended Reading List.
COURSE
OUTLINE
Lectures will be given twice
a week in one and one-half hour periods. The format will be more-or-less
as follows:
| Week 1 Introduction
Lecture 1 Introduction Course Organization and Logistic The Telecommunications Environment Lecture 2 Classification of Telecommunication Systems and Services: Analog and Digital Communications |
Week 9
Internet and the WWW
Lecture 17 Architecture and DNS Lecture 18 Applications: IP and the Internet |
| Week 2 The Basic Communications
Model
Lecture 3 The Shannon Model: Sources and Channels Information, Entropy and Source Coding, Channel Coding Lecture 4 Modulation and Transmission |
Week 10 Subscriber
Access to Multimedia Services
Lecture 19 High Speed Subscriber Access Lecture 20 Multimedia: Video Conferencing |
| Weeks 3-4 Transmission
and Switching
Lecture 5 Multiplexing Frequency Division, Time Division, Code Division Lecture 6 The Synchronous Digital Hierarchy Lecture 7 Switching: Circuit Switching, Packet Switching Lecture 8 Error Control |
Week 11 Wireless
Communications
Lecture 21 Cellular Telephony and PCS Lecture 22 Satellite Communications |
| Weeks 5-6 Data Communications
Lecture 9 Digital Networks: The ISO/OSI Reference Model The Physical, Data Link Layer, and Network Layers Lecture 10 X.25 Lecture 11 ISDN and CCS Lecture 12 Fast Packet Switching Frame Relay and ATM |
Week 12 Current
and Future Trends
Lecture 23 Convergence Lecture 24 Trends |
| Week 7 Local
Area Networks
Lecture 13 Local Area Networks CSMA/CD and Token Ring Lecture 14 Alternatives |
Week 13 (if scheduled}
Lecture 25 Technological Obstacles and Opportunities Lecture 26 Areas, Issues, and Recommendations |
| Week 8 Wide Area Networks
Lecture 15 Internetworking Lecture 16 Internet Protocols TCP/IP |
This course covers a wide range of topics with substantial variation in specificity and rigor. As well, individual students may have more or less knowledge or interest is any particular topic.
The term paper is one way in which each student may pursue the study of a particular technology while considering the issues and generalities brought up in the lecture material and general readings.
With these objectives in mind, it is intended that students will work on their term papers throughout the term. A brief proposal, including specification of the topic and a brief outline, will be due at the end of week four, and the final paper will be due by the end of the last week of classes.
The paper should have a definite theme, and should develop, support and present a cogent argument in support of the theme. Good engineering paper or report style should be used. If in doubt, consult any IEEE publication for examples. While it is difficult to specify the length of any technical paper, one would expect that the term paper would be approximately 15 to 20 pages in length.
The major criteria for evaluation will be the amount of information conveyed to the reader, the clarity with which it is presented, and the persuasiveness with which the author’s point is made. A break-down of the 96.502 Term Paper Marking Scheme might be:
Course evaluation will be based on the assignments and the term paper, with the following weights:
There will be weekly assignments. These will consist of general questions, requiring researched, reasoned answers. The intent of the assignments is to encourage students to think broadly about the subject matter of the course, while participating in lectures on specific topics and concentrating on the narrowed area of their term papers.
A series of assignments is provided in what follows. These cover the first five weeks of the course. Subsequent assignments would cover more specific topics.
September 10, 1998
Due: September 17, 1998
The Telecommunications Technology Management degree program is concerned with the management of engineering processes. The focus is on the process of telecommunications. Telecommunications is a technology, and the management that we are talking about is the management of telecommunications technology.
To manage telecommunications technology it is necessary to understand what is meant by telecommunications technology. To do that we have to understand what we mean by telecommunications and what we mean by technology.
Classic definitions of telecommunications invariably refer to it as communications over a distance via some form or other of electromagnetic means. That is, by radio, or lightwave, or electrical current. Technology is usually referred to as something related to ‘tools" or "machines".
Your task is to formulate definitions of
September 17, 1998
Due: September 24, 1998
Create a taxonomy of telecommunications
technology. That is, create a list of all of the items that you consider
to be part of "telecommunications", showing the relationships between them.
Try to develop the list in a top-down manner, so that the broadest constituents
are listed first and then broken down into finer details. For example,
telecommunications could be considered as being made up of only information
sources, a distribution means, and information destinations. But then,
there are transmitters and receivers, and links and nodes, and errors and
multipath and antennas, and switches and protocols, and so on. How can
you build a structure to contain all the parts in an inter-related way?
Where do they all fit in?
September 24, 1998
Due: October 1, 1998
October 1, 1998
Due: October 8, 1998
October 8, 1998
Due: October 15, 1998
October 15, 1998
Due: October 22, 1998
Discuss the apparent dichotomy between telecommunication networks and computer networks. You might compare the titles in the McGraw-Hill Series on Computer Communications with those found in the Wiley Series in Telecommunications and Signal Processing. Refer to the "Netheads vs. Bellheads" paper and the survey papers in the reading list. Is this a real difference, or a generational gap?
October 22, 1998
Due: November 5, 1998
Research and report on the current state of progress in any one of the following areas:
November 5, 1998
Due: November 19, 1998
Compare and contrast various
Digital Subscriber Loop technologies. Include LMDS and cable modems, as
well as the copper line methods. Comment on the both the technology and
the degree of deployment. Don’t forget to check out the Ottawa ADSL offering
from Bell. Please provide an opinion on which technology you think will
"win" technology.