ELEC/TELE/PHTN 4123

Electrical/Telecommunications Design Proficiency

Session 1, 2014

Lab 3: Communication Systems Design

Dr Elias Aboutanios

Aim
The aim of this lab is to examine your ability to apply concepts from the areas communications and electronics to the
analysis, design and implementation of a communications system for data transmission.

Lab Organisation and Marking Scheme

The laboratory design task aims to test you on a number of components that define your ability to behave as a
professional engineer in the context of communications systems design:
1. Firstly, having acquired the relevant theory from the courses you have undertaken as part of the degree, you are
required to demonstrate a basic proficiency in communications and electronics design.
2. You must be able to identify and acquire new knowledge that you are lacking and that is essential to the successful
completion of the project. There will rarely be a situation where you will already have all the knowledge you
need to solve a problem. Thus it is important that you can research what you do not know.
3. You need to be able to work in a logical and systematic fashion. Solving a design problem is not about finding
a kit or some instructions on the web or in a textbook and following them blindly. Rather it involves making
choices subject to the requirements and constraints you have. Therefore, you must identify the pre-requisite
knowledge that would allow you make these choices, and exercise this knowledge in a structured way to achieve
your aim.
4. You must be capable of working individually. You should be self-reliant.
5. You must also be able to work as part of a team, to present your ideas, discuss them, defend them, and provide
constructive criticism to others. Your understanding of your task and your ability to communicate clearly are
essential in this regard.
6. Finally, you must also be capable of applying sound design practice towards solving the design problem you are
given.
The laboratory will run over three sessions: a preliminary lab, an open lab session and an assessment lab session.
The preliminary lab will contribute 10% to the total lab mark, the assessment will count for 80%, while remaining
10% will come from the report and self-reflection exercise.

Preliminary Design Session

During this session, you are required to achieve an adequate understanding of the requirements as well as complete a
preliminary design. The preliminary lab session is organised as follows:
Reading time: Approximately 10 minutes to read the design task and extract the requirements.
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Requirements Discussion: The groups get together and discuss the requirements. This is essentially the requirements analysis phase. Approximately 15 minutes are allocated to this activity.
Preliminary design phase: Duration 2-2.5hrs. It is extremely important that each group does this on their own
and no interaction between the groups takes place. That is students should treat this as an exam where they
are are not allowed to interact with anyone other than their partner. This is so that each group comes up with
their solution and a variety of solutions are presented to the discussion phase.
Design Presentation: Each team will very briefly describe their solution. No questions or discussions are allowed
here. A maximum of 5 or 6 minutes is allocated to each team.
Design discussion: 20-30 minutes. The aim is to discuss and debate the solutions. This should be a positive
discussion with constructive criticism one another in order to improve your collective chances of success.
Essentially, the lab is divided into three major phases. The preparatory part, consisting of the reading time and
first discussion, and lasting about 30 minutes; the preliminary design part taking about 2.5 hrs of the lab time; and
the presentation and final discussion occupying the last hour of the lab.
It is important to see the purpose behind this process. It consists of a combination of individual work and group
interactions. During the first discussion your task is to understand the requirements and identify the concepts that are
required for you to complete the design task. In the second phase, the work in pairs allows you to use your knowledge
to arrive at your own design. This is extremely important firstly to enable you to assess your prior knowledge and
identify your weaknesses, and secondly to the success of the group session. The larger the variety of designs that are
presented is, the more likely the quality of the final design will be improved. Therefore, it is important to contribute
and be able to constructively criticise the designs of others and to explain and defend your own (note that it is just
as important that you see a valid point someone else might make regarding your approach). This should be done,
however, in the spirit of cooperation and not competition. Imagine that you are a team in a company and are working
together to produce this design. Your mark for this session will reflect the quality of the contribution you make.
The marks for the preliminary session are primarily allocated to the presentation and contribution to the final
discussion.
Following the preliminary lab session, you have two weeks to complete your design, refine it, improve it, tweak it,
or change it as you see fit. During this time there is an open lab as per the schedule in the course outline. In finalising
your design, you do not have to restrict yourselves to the results of the first lab session. You must also produce your
design report prior to the assessment lab. The report should include the following sections:
1. The Design Requirements: In this section you are to explain the design task and the requirements.
2. The Detailed Design: This section should explain your design in detail.
3. The implementation and Test Plan: This section should give a detailed implementation plan, including the
detailed steps to get your design implemented with minimal risk. For example you should include the steps for
measurement of actual component values and comparing them with nominal values. Calculations should be done
to verify that deviations between actual and nominal values do not take the performance outside the acceptable
bounds (that is the design should still satisfy the requirements). Test points and corresponding outputs should
be clearly identified and their results documented. The implementation and test plans will be crucial in your
assessment. Students will be required to submit their report through Moodle by 3pm during the assessment lab.

Assessment Session
The first hour of the assessment lab is devoted for student teams to prepare for the marking. Each group should set
up their design at their desk and the preliminary report will need to be submitted on Moodle before assessment starts
(that is by 3pm).
A random marking order will be announced (written on the board) and the asssessment will start at 3pm sharp.
Every one will be asked to move away from their desk. Each group will be allocated a maximum of 25 minutes for the
assessment. The assessors are instructed to adhere strictly to this time allocation and to uphold the schedule. You
will be given no additional assessment after your assessment allocation is up and your design cannot be checked again.
5 minutes prior to the start of their assesssment, the group to be assessed may get back to their desk to be ready for
the marking.
It is important for you to be well prepared for the assessment. The time allocation will seem very short if you
are not ready. You will first be asked to explain and demonstrate your design. As mentioned in the course outline,
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you have a responsibility to show off your design and demonstrate that it works and meets the requirements. You
should explain your reasoning, any assumptions you have made, design decisions you have taken, etc... If you cannot
demonstrate your design, then it does not work as far as the assessor is concerned. In all this, it is difficult to overstress
the importance of the implementation and test plans. You must prepare them carefully and make sure they are useful
to you in the lab. Both of them will play a significant role in your assessment. The implementation plan should give
you the instructions to navigate your way from the start of the lab to a working system. The test plan should give
you a clear way of testing and verifying that your system works (i.e. it does what it was designed to do, in the way it
was designed to do it.) This is important both for debugging your system in case something does not work, and for
demonstrating it to your lab assessor.
The marking scheme for this session is based on the following criteria:
Neatness of the breadboard/code.
Demonstrating your design - Does your design achieve the requirements?
Demonstrating your understanding, can you explain the operation of your system?

The Self-Reflection Exercise

An important goal of the subject is to give you the opportunity to identify your strengths and weaknesses and so
improve yourselves. Therefore, at the conclusion of the lab, you are required to reflect on the experience you had, the
challenges you faced, and the quality of the work you managed to achieve. The self reflection exercise will be done
electronically on Moodle (the deadline will be 5pm Wednesday immediately following the lab.) As part of this exercise
you need to identify what you got out of the experience and where you could improve. Therefore your reflection on
the task should consider three elements: your strengths, your weaknesses, and how you can improve.

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ELEC/TELE/PHTN 4123: Electrical/Telecommunications Design Proficiency

The Design Task

In this lab you are to design a data transmission system to transmit binary data over a channel that will be modelled
using a circuit. The channel consists of a circuit that will simulate the channel response. The data will be in the
form of a binary file and the outputs from and inputs to the PC(s) will be achieved using the sound card and/or NI
DAQ. A general representation of a communications system is shown in figure 1. You are free to use any coding and
modulation schemes you choose to. Your goal is to maximise the bit rate subject to a bit error rate not exceeding
102 . The requirement of your system are as follows:
PC1

Interface
Circuit

Channel

Interface
Circuit

PC2

Figure 1: General Communications system.

Figure 2: Channel Model.

1. You are required to build the circuit shown in Figure 3. This circuit will serve to simulate the channel model
shown in Figure 2.
2. You will need to analyse and model the channel.
3. You will set the potentiometer so that the rms noise amplitude is 0.2V.
The marks will be allocated as follows: 10% for item 1, 30% for items 2 and 3, and 80% for a working communications system that maximises the bit rate as required. Notice that the marks add up to more than 100% and the final
mark for the lab will be capped at 100.

Figure 3: Communications Channel Schematic.