CS 3413 Data Communications First Midterm Exam Review: Fall 2004
This will be a closed book exam.
The exam will cover chapters 3-5 of the text and some material from class
that is not in the text. For chapter 5, the exam will only go up through
Section 5.1.
In addition to the material in the text, you need to know about reflection
and refraction.
- Be able to identify the angle of incidence and angle of
reflection and know that they are usually equal.
- Understand the meaning of index of refraction and be able to identify
and calculate the angle of refraction and critical angle.
- Know Snell's Law.
You need to have memorized and know how to use the following:
- The speed of light in vacuum
- The relationship between wavelength and frequency
- Graphs of sine and cosine functions
- Definition of decibel
- Nyquist Bandwidth Formula
- Shannon Capacity Formula
Aside from these the exam will concentrate more on understanding than
memorization.
Understand the material in the slides and be able to do problems similar to the
homework problems and the ones done in class.
Here are some additional things to think about:
- You need to be able to identify the frequency and phase if a sine function
both from a graph and a formula.
- You must understand the consequences of the fact that a periodic square wave
contains arbitrarily high frequencies.
- Understand the meaning of the terms spectrum (of a signal)
and bandwidth (of a signal or medium).
- Understand what modems and codecs are used for as well as how they are the
same and how they are different.
- Understand the concept of a parabolic antenna (but you do not have to
be able to derive the properties).
- Understand the concept of line of sight (but you do not have to memorize or
be able to derive the formula).
- Understand, but not necessarily memorize, the encoding schemes of
Section 5.1.
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