ELE103
Telecommunications and Internet Fundamentals (Level: 4 Credits:15)

This module gives a broad overview of telecommunications and internet systems, covering the fundamental principles and concepts for transmitting information, and techniques for representing and analysing communications signals and telecommunications traffic.

The module content includes:

COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS: basic elements, communications signals, time and frequency domains, bandwidth, the electromagnetic spectrum, physical media (copper, fibre, and radio propagation), signal degradation, noise and signal to noise ratio, networks and architectures, protocols and layering, standards.

MODULATION AND MULTIPLEXING: principles of sinusoidal carrier modulation, amplitude modulation and demodulation, frequency division multiplexing, pulse amplitude modulation, sampling, aliassing, pulse code modulation, quantisation, companding, time division multiplexing.

DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKS: bit-rate and channel bandwidth, digital modulation schemes, modems, data transmission, throughput, telecommunications networks and resource sharing, packet and circuit switched networks, basic call set-up.

INTERNET PROTOCOLS AND APPLICATIONS: internetworking, introduction to layer 3 (IP) and layer 4 (TCP/UDP) protocols, applications protocols: email, ftp, world-wide web, packet voice.