*T3240710*

T324/X

Course Examination 2007 KEEPING AHEAD IN INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES

Friday, 19 October 2007 2:30 pm 5:30 pm

Time allowed: 3 hours

There are two parts to this paper; attempt both of them and follow carefully the instructions in each. Part 1 40% of the examination marks This part contains eight questions and you should attempt all of them. You are advised to spend about 70 minutes on this part. Write all of your answers in the main answer book provided. Part 2 60% of the examination marks This part contains three questions, of which you should attempt two. You are advised to spend about 110 minutes on this part. You must use a separate supplementary answer book for each question attempted. Suggested word counts are included for some questions. These are indicative only; you are not expected to count words, and there are no penalties for shorter or longer answers. At the end of the examination Check that you have written your personal identifier and examination number on each answer book used. Failure to do so will mean that your work cannot be identified. Put all your used answer books and your question paper together, with your signed desk record on top. Fix them all together with the paper fastener provided. T324 Note on Exam Articles In this paper you will find references to articles found in various journals and websites. These articles form part of the required reading for part 2 of the paper, and were distributed in printed form to students who sat this exam. For copyright reasons we are unable to print these articles alongside the exam paper once the paper has been released for sale, but the articles should be available from their respective sources, (listed along with the title of each article). Exam articles are produced separately for each exam paper and given to students both before and at the final exam.

PART 1

This part carries 40% of the total examination marks. You should attempt all the questions. Each question carries five marks. You are advised to spend about 70 minutes on this part, about 9 minutes per question. Write your answers in the main answer book provided, start each answer on a new page. For full marks, calculations must be clearly presented so that your steps can be easily followed.

Question 1

(a) Given that an antenna in free space receives 22 W of signal power at a distance of 3 km from an omni-directional transmitter, estimate how much it will receive at 9 km. Similarly, estimate the signal strength at a distance of 15 km. (b) A 60 GHz radio wave propagates 4 km through the atmosphere and through a brick wall of 100 mm thickness. Rain leads to an atmospheric loss of 18 dB/km and brick attenuates at 900 dB/m at this frequency. Calculate the total power loss in dB over this path due to attenuation by the atmosphere and by the wall. (Ignore the propagation loss due to the inverse square or other power law.) (5 marks)

Question 2

Figure 1 is a constellation diagram of a modulation scheme.

Q 1000 1010 3 0010 0000

1 1001 1011 0011 1 1101 1111 0111 0001 3 0101 I

1100

1110

0110

0100

Figure 1

Constellation diagram

(a) Explain what type of modulation scheme could be represented by Figure 1. (b) Given that the bandwidth of the channel is 4500 Hz and the symbol rate is 3375 baud, calculate the data rate and spectral efficiency of this modulation scheme. (5 marks) Question 3 Briefly explain the binary exponential backoff technique for avoiding collisions in a wireless local area network. Your explanation should include a numerical example of the effect of the technique when four attempts are required to successfully transmit a frame. Clearly state any assumptions you make. (5 marks) Question 4 Briefly describe how you might organise your literature search for finding information on the topic of radio frequency identification devices in consumer products.
T324/X

(5 marks) Question 5 A type of wireless sensor device is to be deployed over a wide geographical area. The device has two transmission power settings. In the low power setting the range of the device is 2 m and the expected battery lifetime is 35 weeks. In the high power setting the device has a range of 5 m. You should assume that the same battery is used and the transmitter power is proportional to 1/d 3. Estimate how long the battery in the device operating in the high power mode can be expected to last. Clearly explain the reasoning behind your calculations. (5 marks) Question 6 Briefly explain why conserving power is important in sensors in wireless sensor networks. (5 marks) Question 7 Part 1 of Block 3 discusses various factors that can result in the failure of a project. List two such factors under each of the following headings: Organisational context Management of the project Conduct of the project (5 marks) Question 8 What is meant by the digital divide? How does the digital divide relate to the NorthSouth divide? (5 marks)

T324/X

TURN OVER 3

PART 2

This part carries 60% of the total examination marks. You should attempt two You are advised to spend about 110 minutes on this part, 55 minutes per question. Use a separate supplementary answer book for each answer. For full marks, calculations must be clearly presented so that your steps can be easily followed. (i) Describe briefly the various effects that can cause deviation from line of sight propagation of radio waves. What is meant by multi-path effects, and why can they be undesirable in radio transmission? Aim to write about 200 words (7 marks) (ii) Explain, with the aid of a simple sketch, how these effects can be used to advantage in a simple two-by-two multiple-in, multiple-out (MIMO) antenna system. With reference to the article titled Antenna Design and Analysis for MIMO Communication Systems, by Robert W. Heath Jr (found at http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~rheath/research/mimo/antenna/) explain briefly the difference between space, pattern and polarisation diversity in a MIMO system. According to the article, what is the major advantage of pattern diversity over space diversity? Aim to write about 250 words (8 marks)

Question 9 (a)

(b) A system employs a COFDM (coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) scheme with the data distributed evenly over 6817 subcarriers. The coding takes the form of a convolutional coder with a coding rate of . The modulation method on each subcarrier is 64-QAM. The data rate for the system is 4 Mbit/s. (i) Briefly describe the basic principle of OFDM. Include a simple sketch in your explanation. Aim to write about 150 words plus the sketch (7 marks) (ii) Calculate the following: the number of coded bits per subcarrier the number of coded bits per OFDM symbol the number of data bits per OFDM symbol the data rate on each subcarrier the signalling rate on each subcarrier. (8 marks)

You should briefly explain the reasoning behind your calculations.

T324/X

Question 10

(a) This part of the question is based on the section titled Design of ultra-low power medium access protocols in the paper Emerging techniques for long lived wireless sensor networks by Raghunathan et al. (2006) which can be found in the IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 44, no. 4, pp. 108-14. (i) Briefly explain what is meant by duty cycle in the context of power conservation in wireless sensor networks, and describe a practical problem of duty cycles to conserve power. (5 marks) (ii) Discuss the relative advantage of the asynchronous approach with wake-up frames over the approach with a long preamble. (10 marks) (iii) Briefly explain your interpretation of the following sentence, which appears in the paper: Some of the representative preamble sizes being used, 250 and 1212 bytes for 11.5 and 2.2 percent duty cycles, respectively, clearly indicate the significant energy overhead of BMAC. (5 marks) Aim to write about 350 words for the whole of part (a) (b) This part of the question is based on the paper Energy balancing multipath routing protocol for wireless sensor networks by Chen and Nasser (2006) from Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Quality of Service in Heterogeneous Wired/Wireless Networks (QShine 2006), Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, August 7-9, 2006. Explain, in your own words: (i) (ii) why the design of routing protocols is so different for WSNs than for conventional networks; the problems the authors identify in conventional multi-path routing protocols designed to minimise energy consumption in WSNs; and Aim to write about 200 words for the whole of part (b) (10 marks)

(iii) how their proposed solution overcomes these problems.

T324/X

TURN OVER 5

Question 11

(a) (i) Describe briefly the processes that are commonly involved in ensuring that a paper presented at an academic conference, or an article published in an academic journal or as a book chapter, is of good academic quality. Do these processes always result in effective quality control?

(ii)

(iii) List the factors you should bear in mind when critically reading such a paper or article. Aim to write about 250 words for the whole of part (a) (10 marks) (b) This part of the question is based on the paper Computing devices for all: creating and selling the low-cost computer by Fonseca and Pal (2006), from Proceedings of the 2006 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD 2006), Berkeley, CA, May 25-26, 2006, pp. 11-20. (i) For both the Computador Popular (CP) and the Simputer, answer, in a few phrases, each of the first three of the total or basic questions from Part 1 of Block 3. You are advised to do this in note form in a table like the following: CP What, basically, does the system do? What gives the system its identity? What are the main objectives? (10 marks) (ii) Describe some of the major reasons why, according to the authors of the paper, both of these projects failed to achieve their aims. State two ways in which the projects illustrated good practice, and two illustrations of poor practice, in the context of the major causes of systems failure discussed in Part 1 of Block 3. Aim to write about 300 words (10 marks) Simputer

[END OF QUESTION PAPER]

T324/X