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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MIMO with MMSE equalizer

In a previous post, we had discussed a 2×2 MIMO transmission using BPSK modulation in Rayleigh channel with a Zero Forcing equalizer. The simulated results with the 2×2 MIMO system  with zero forcing equalizer showed matching results as obtained in for a 1×1 system for BPSK modulation in Rayleigh channel. In this post, we will…

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Solved objective questions (GATE)

Using the services of a new author ‘RV’, we are starting a new series of articles in the blog. Typically in India, many of the competitive examinations pertaining to Engineering (GATE, IES) and rectuitment by private and public sector companies (ISRO, BSNL, BEL, BHEL) uses examination with objective questions for the first level screening. We…

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MIMO with ML equalization

We have discussed quite a few receiver structures for a 2×2 MIMO channel namely, (a) Zero Forcing (ZF) equalization (b) Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) equalization (c) Zero Forcing equalization with Successive Interference Cancellation (ZF-SIC) (d) ZF-SIC with optimal ordering and (e) MIMO with MMSE SIC and optimal ordering From the above receiver structures, we…

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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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Linear to log conversion

In signal processing blocks like power estimation used in digital communication, it may be required to represent the estimate in log scale. This post explains a simple linear to log conversion scheme proposed in the DSP Guru column on DSP Trick: Quick-and-Dirty Logarithms. The scheme makes implementation of a linear to log conversion simple and…

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