Closed form solution for linear regression

In the previous post on Batch Gradient Descent and Stochastic Gradient Descent, we looked at two iterative methods for finding the parameter vector  which minimizes the square of the error between the predicted value  and the actual output  for all  values in the training set. A closed form solution for finding the parameter vector  is possible, and in this post…

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Understanding an OFDM transmission

Let us try to understand simulation of a typical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) transmission defined per IEEE 802.11a specification. Orthogonal pulses In a previous post (here ), we have understood that the minimum frequency separation for two sinusoidals with arbitrary phases to be orthogonal is , where is the symbol period. In Orthogonal Frequency…

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GATE-2012 ECE Q3 (communication)

Question 3 on Communication from GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering) 2012 Electronics and Communication Engineering paper. Q3. In a baseband communications link, frequencies upto 3500Hz are used for signalling. Using a raised cosine pulse with 75% excess bandwidth and for no inter-symbol interference, the maximum possible signaling rate in symbols per second is, (A)…

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Receive diversity in AWGN

Some among you will be aware that in a wireless link having multiple antenna’s at the receiver (aka receive diversity) improves the bit error rate (BER) performance. In this post, let us try to understand the BER improvement with receive diversity. And, since we are just getting started, let us limit ourselves to additive white…

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Scaling factor in QAM

When QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) is used, typically one may find a scaling factor associated with the constellation mapping operation. It may be reasonably obvious that this scaling factor is for normalizing the average energy to one. This post attempts to compute the average energy of the 16-QAM, 64-QAM and M-QAM constellation (where is a…

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GATE-2012 ECE Q46 (math)

Question 46 on math from GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering) 2012 Electronics and Communication Engineering paper. Q46. The maximum value of  in the interval [1, 6] is (A) 21 (B) 25 (C) 41 (D) 46 Solution Let us start by finding the critical points of the function . The first derivative is, . Solving by…

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Chi Square Random Variable

While trying to derive the theoretical bit error rate (BER) for BPSK modulation in a Rayleigh fading channel, I realized that I need to discuss chi square random variable prior. What is chi-square random variable? Let there be independent and identically distributed Gaussian random variables with mean and variance and we form a new random…

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GATE-2012 ECE Q24 (math)

Question 24 on math from GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering) 2012 Electronics and Communication Engineering paper. Q24. Two independent random variables X and Y are uniformly distributed in the interval [-1, 1]. The probability that max[X,Y] is less than 1/2 is (A) 3/4 (B) 9/16 (C) 1/4 (D) 2/3

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