2nd order sigma delta modulator

In a previous post, the variance of the in-band quantization noise for a first order sigma delta modulator was derived. Taking it one step furhter, let us find the variance of the quantization noise filtered by a second order filter. With a first order filter, the quantization noise passes through a system with transfer function…

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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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Matlab or C for Viterbi Decoder?

Are you bothered by speed of the speed of the simulations which you develop in Matlab/Octave? I was not bothered much, till I ran into the Viterbi decoder. If you recall, the Matlab/Octave simulation script for BER computation with hard soft decision Viterbi algorithm provided in post Viterbi with finite survivor state memory took around…

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GATE-2012 ECE Q7 (digital)

Question 7 on digital from GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering) 2012 Electronics and Communication Engineering paper. Q7. The output Y of a 2-bit comparator is logic 1 whenever the 2 bit input A is greater than 2 bit input B. The number of combinations for which output is logic 1 is (A) 4 (B)…

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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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Books

Happy holidays! 🙂 Wishing every one merry Christmas and a great year 2009 and beyond. I will list down some of the books which I have on my desk. They help me with the math and simulations Digital Communication: Third Edition, by John R. Barry, Edward A. Lee, David G. Messerschmitt

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Transmit beamforming

In this post lets discuss a closed-loop transmit diversity scheme, where the transmitter has the knowledge of the channel. As there is a feedback path required from the receiver, to communicate the channel seen by the receiver to the transmitter, the scheme is called closed-loop transmit diversity scheme. Recall that the transmit diversity using Space…

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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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