Lab 1 - Communication in AWGN channels

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In this lab, you will use GNU Radio to simulate a digital baseband communication system. Any version greater than v3.7 will suffice. There are installation instructions available here.

If you are unfamiliar with GNU Radio, it is strongly recommended that you complete the introductory GRC tutorials hosted on this site before trying these labs.

You will learn about:

• baseband communication,
• bit errors.

Deliverables

In this lab there are the following deliverables:

• a single page of answers to the deliverable questions laid out in the lab. In this lab there are 4 of them. They are all highlighted and labelled with their respective question numbers. Each question will require some thought and should be answered concisely with 1 to 2 sentences of text and perhaps an accompanying figure,
• a short code you write to generate some BER curves,
• your final BER curve figures.

Note

You will need access to Matlab (or Python) for this. If you wish to use Matlab it is free for UVic students at matlab.uvic.ca.

Note

In the ECE 350 labs, flowgraphs were shown to you with all of the block values already set. This made it possible to complete the labs by only copying from pictures. In ECE 450 the flowgraphs presented do not have the block values pre-set. Use the flowgraphs as a guiding point, but you will have to adjust the block parameters depending on their purpose. If you can’t figure something out, ask a TA!