ECN-311: Principles of Digital Communication

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering

Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee

Tutorial 1
By
Prof. Ekant Sharma

TAs: Abhilash Ranjan and Malay Chakraborty

Date: July 31, 2024 Due date: Aug 7, 2024

Instructions for students:
• This tutorial consists of 12 questions.

• Attempt all questions for comprehensive practice.

• In case of any doubt, kindly contact the TAs assigned for the respective Tutorial only.

Problem 1. Consider a noisy telephone line transmitting a signal with a signal-to-noise

ratio (SNR) of 30 dB. Find the channel capacity.

Answer 1.
C = 29.90Kbps

Problem 2. A communication channel with bandwidth B and certain signal-to-noise ra-

tio, SN R >> 1 has capacity C. How does SNR change if the channel capacity is increased
by twice the bandwidth?

Answer 2.
SNRnew = 4 SNRold

Problem 3. For a given signal-to-noise ratio, SN R = λ, the capacity of a noisy commu-

nication channel is given as

C = Blog2 (1 + λB −1 )

where B denotes the bandwidth of the channel. If the bandwidth of the channel becomes
infinite, Can you comment on the capacity of the channel?

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Answer 3.
C = lnλ2 = 1.44λ

Problem 4. A communication system always encounters one of three possible interfer-

ence waveforms: F1 , F2 , or F3 . The probability of each interference is 0.8, 0.16, and 0.04,
respectively. The communication system fails with probabilities 0.01, 0.1, and 0.4 when it
encounters F1 , F2 , and F3 , respectively. Given that the system has failed, find the probabil-
ity that the failure is a result of F1 , F2 , or F3 , respectively.

Answer 4.

P (F1 | B) = 0.2
P (F2 | B) = 0.4
P (F3 | B) = 0.4

Problem 5.
a) Suppose a box of diodes consists of 12 good diodes and 4 faulty diodes. If 5 diodes are
randomly selected, one at a time, without replacement, determine the probability of obtain-
ing the sequence of diodes in the order of good, faulty, good, good, faulty.

b) From a lot of 20 integrated circuits (ICs), 5 ICs are defective. A sample of 4 ICs is
drawn. Let X be a number of defective ICs drawn. Obtain probability mass function if:
i) ICs are drawn with replacement.
ii) ICs are drawn without replacement.
Can you calculate P(0 < X < 4) for both cases?

Answer 5.
a) P (G1 F1 G2 G3 F2 ) = 0.030219
b)
i) With Replacement:

x 0 1 2 3 4
81 27 27 3 1
p(x) 256 64 128 64 256

Table 1: PMF for ”With replacement” case

P (0 < X < 4) = P (X = 1) + P (X = 2) + P (X = 3) = .6796

ii) Without Replacement:

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 x 0 1 2 3 4
91 455 70 10 1
p(x) 323 969 323 323 969

Table 2: PMF for ”Without replacement” case

P (0 < X < 4) = P (X = 1) + P (X = 2) + P (X = 3) = .7172

Problem 6. A non-symmetric binary communications channel is shown in the figure be-

low: Assume the input is “0” with probability p and “1” with probability (1-p).

Figure 1: A binary non-symmetric channel

i) Can you guess the condition for which the given channel becomes symmetric?
ii) For p = 0.8, ϵ = 0.05 and δ = 0.01, find the probability that the output is 0.
iii) Given that the output is 1, which input is more probable for the same p, ϵ, and δ as in
part ii)?

Answer 6.
i) In a symmetric channel, the crossover probabilities are the same, i.e.,
ϵ=δ
ii)
PY (0) = PY |X (0 | 1) · PX (1) + PY |X (0 | 0) · PX (0)

= (0.05) · (0.2) + (0.99) · (0.8) = 0.802

iii)
PY |X (1 | 1) · PX (1) (0.95) · (0.2)
PX|Y (1 | 1) = = = 0.9595
PY (1) 0.198
PY |X (0 | 1) · PX (1) (0.05) · (0.2)
PX|Y (0 | 1) = = = 0.05
PY (1) 0.198
The input “1” is more probable for transmission given that the output is 1.

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Problem 7. The transmission time, X of the messages in a communication system has an
exponential distribution such that

P [X > x] = e−λx , x > 0.

i) Find the cdf and the pdf of X.

ii) Use Markov’s inequality to bound P(X ≥ 3) if λ = 1.
iii) Use Chebyshev’s inequality to bound P(X ≥ 3) for same λ = 1 and compare it with
actual value.
iv) Prove the memoryless property of the exponential distribution.

Answer 7.
i) For an exponential random variable X with rate parameter λ, the cumulative distribution
function (CDF) is given by:

FX (x) = P (X ≤ x) = 1 − e−λx , x>0

The probability density function (PDF) is the derivative of the CDF with respect to x:

dFX (x)
fX (x) = = λe−λx , x>0
dx

ii)Markov’s Inequality states that for a non-negative random variable X and t > 0:

E(X)
P (X ≥ t) ≤
t

Hence,
1
P (X ≥ 3) ≤ = 0.333
3

iii) The Chebyshev Inequality is given by:

1
P (|X − µ| ≥ kσ) ≤ .
k2

Hence,
P (X ≥ 3) ≤ 0.25

The Actual value is 0.05.

iv) For a memoryless random variable X, the memoryless property is given by:

P (X > x + y | X > x) = P (X > y)

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 To derive this, consider:

P (X > x + y and X > x)

P (X > x + y | X > x) =
P (X > x)

Since X > x + y implies X > x, we have:

P (X > x + y and X > x) = P (X > x + y)

Thus:
P (X > x + y)
P (X > x + y | X > x) =
P (X > x)
For an exponential random variable with rate λ, the probability P (X > x) is given by:

P (X > x) = e−λx

Therefore:
e−λ(x+y)
P (X > x + y | X > x) = = e−λy
e−λx
Finally:
P (X > y) = e−λy
Thus:
P (X > x + y | X > x) = P (X > y)

Problem 8. The noise voltage in an electric circuit can be modeled as a Gaussian random
variable with mean equal to zero and variance equal to 10−8 .
i) What is the probability that the value of the noise exceeds 10−4 ?
ii) What is the probability that the noise value is between -2x10−4 and 10−4 ?

Answer 8.
i) The probability that the value of the noise exceeds 10−4 = 0.1587.
ii) The probability that the noise value is between -2x10−4 and 10−4 = 0.8185

Problem 9.
a) Find the mean and variance of the uniform discrete random variable that takes on values
in the set {1, 2,..., L} with equal probability.

b) An optical communication system employs a photodetector whose output is modeled

as a Poisson(λ) random variable X. Find the mean and the variance of X.

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Answer 9.
a)
X L+1
E(X) = x p(x) =
x∈X
2

L2 − 1
Var(X) = E(X 2 ) − [E(X)]2 =
12
2
−1
For discrete Uniform RV, X ∼ U (a, b),M ean = a+b
2
, V ariance = (b−a+1)
12
(b−a)2
For Continuous Uniform RV, X ∼ U (a, b), M ean = a+b 2
, V ariance = 12
b) M ean = V ariance = λ

Problem 10. Suppose that a smartphone attempts to transmit a packet to a base station
using wireless communications. Due to the unreliability of the wireless channel, the base
station successfully receives the packet with a probability 23 , independent of outcomes of
prior transmissions. The smartphone knows whether or not the packet is successfully re-
ceived by the base station right after the transmission. If the packet is not received, then
the smartphone immediately retransmits.
i) Find the probability that a packet is successfully delivered to the base station in exactly
10 attempts.
ii) Suppose the smartphone has 3 packets to send, one at a time. Find the probability that
there are all 3 packets are successfully delivered to the base station in exactly 10 attempts.

Answer 10.
i) Let X be a random variable representing the number of transmission attempts until a
packet is successfully delivered to the base station (BS). X follows a geometric distribution
with parameter q, where q is the probability of success on each attempt. The probability
mass function (PMF) of X is given by:

pX (k) = Pr(X = k) = q · (1 − q)k−1

where:

• k is the number of transmission attempts, with k = 1, 2, 3, . . .

• q is the probability of success on each transmission attempt

• 1 − q is the probability of failure on each transmission attempt

Hence, the probability that a packet is successfully delivered to the base station in exactly
10 attempts is

pX (10) ≈ 3.387 × 10−5 .

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ii) If Y denotes the number of transmissions until r = 3 packets are delivered, and pY (k)
follows a negative binomial distribution, the PMF is given by:
 
k−1 r
pY (k) = q (1 − q)k−r
r−1
For k = 10, r = 3, and q = 32 , the probability is:
   3  10−3
10 − 1 2 2
pY (10) = 1− ≈ 4.877 × 10−3
3−1 3 3

Problem 11. Consider a communication system that transmits a data packet of 1024 bits.
Each bit can be in error with the probability of 10−2 . Find the (approximate) probability
that more than 30 of the 1024 bits are in error.

Answer 11.
The (approximate) probability that more than 30 of the 1024 bits are in error is

1.925 × 10−10

Problem 12 A binary transmission system sends a ”0” bit by transmitting a -v voltage

signal and a ”1” bit by transmitting a +v voltage. The received signal is corrupted by
Gaussian Noise and given by:

Y = X + N,

where X is a transmitted signal, and N is a noise voltage with pdf fN (x). If P[ ”1”]=p=1-
P[”0”]. Find the pdf of Y.

Answer 12.

Let A be the event that 0 is transmitted. For this event, the random variable X is given
by:
X = −v
The probability of event A is:
P (A) = 1 − p
The received signal Y is therefore:
Y = −v + N
where N represents the noise term.
Let B be the event that 1 is transmitted. For this event, the random variable X is given
by:
X = +v

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The probability of event B is:
P (B) = p
The received signal Y is therefore:
Y =v+N
where N represents the noise term. The cumulative distribution function (CDF) of Y can
be expressed as:

P (Y ≤ y) = P (Y ≤ y | A)P (A) + P (Y ≤ y | B)P (B)

Substitute Y = X + N and the corresponding probabilities:

⇒ FY (y) = P (X + N ≤ y | A)P (A) + P (X + N ≤ y | B)P (B)

Given X = −v for A and X = v for B:

⇒ FY (y) = P (−v + N ≤ y)(1 − p) + P (v + N ≤ y)p

Rewriting N in terms of the probability function:

⇒ FY (y) = P (N ≤ y + v)(1 − p) + P (N ≤ y − v)p

Finally, using the CDF FN of the noise N :

⇒ FY (y) = FN (y + v)(1 − p) + FN (y − v)p

Differentiating with respect to y, we get

The PDF of Y can be expressed in terms of the PDF of N as follows:

fY (y) = fN (y + v)(1 − p) + fN (y − v)p

Since N is a Gaussian random variable with mean 0 and variance σ 2 , its PDF is given
by:
1 n2
fN (n) = √ e− 2σ2
2πσ 2
Substituting this into the expression for fY (y):
1 − p − (y+v)2 2 p (y−v)2
fY (y) = √ e 2σ + √ e− 2σ2
2πσ 2 2πσ 2