GATE-2012 ECE Q36 (math)

Question 36 on math from GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering) 2012 Electronics and Communication Engineering paper. Q36. A fair coin is tossed till a head appears for the first time. The probability that the number of required tosses is odd, is (A) 1/3 (B) 1/2 (C) 2/3 (D) 3/4 Solution Let us start 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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Alamouti STBC

In the recent past, we have discussed three receive diversity schemes – Selection combining, Equal Gain Combining and Maximal Ratio Combining. All the three approaches used the antenna array at the receiver to improve the demodulation performance, albeit with different levels of complexity. Time to move on to a transmit diversity scheme where the information…

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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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