EMP 5116 Final Exams

1. What region of the electromagnetic spectrum is used in mobile telephony and

computing wireless networks?
Ans. Microwave region of the spectrum 1Ghz to 100Ghz
950 MHz to 1900 MHz

2. What is the relationship between the frequency and the period of a wave?
Ans. They are inverse to each other f = 1
T

3. What is the relationship between the wavelength and the wave period?
Ans. The wavelength is the distance a wave travels during an interval of time equal to its
period. If c is the speed of light wave-length = c * wave-period

4. Is visible light higher or lower frequency than microwaves?

Ans. Visible light is higher frequency that microwave V > M in F

5. What are the wave parameters that can be modulated in order to encode
information?
Ans. Amplitude, Frequency and Phase modulation

6. Draw a wave modulated by amplitude/frequency/phase

Amplitude Modulation

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Frequency Modulation

Phase Modulation

7. What is the role of a carrier wave in wireless channels?

Ans. Carrier wave is high-frequency electromagnetic wave modulated in amplitude or
frequency to convey a signal and transmit the information through space.
This information is de-modulated by receiver to retrieve information.

8. Define the measuring unit for frequency

Ans. Hertz denoted by Hz, 1Hz = 1 cycle per second

9. Define Channel bandwidth

Ans. The difference between the maximum and the minimum frequency of a transmission
channel.

10. Define Spectral Efficiency

Ans. It is a measure of how many Bits of information can be encoded for every 1Hz of the
carrier. Also known as Encoding Efficiency or Code Rate
11. What is the measuring unit for Spectral Efficiency?
Ans. Bits per second per hertz or bps/Hz

12. Define the Data Rate of a communication channel

Ans. It is defined as maximum number of bits of information per unit of time that can be
successfully transmitted through the channel (i.e. channel capacity)

13. What is the measuring unit for a communication channel data rate?
Ans. Is measured in bits per second (bps)

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14. Assuming a carrier wave of 5GHz and a symmetrical wireless channel with a
bandwidth of 40Mhz, what are the maximum frequency and the minimum
frequency in the channel.
Ans. 5Ghz + 20Mhz maximum frequency, 5GHz 20Mhz minimum frequency

15. What is BPSK?

Ans. Binary Phase-Shift Keying is a carrier wave phase modulation technique for information
coding.

16. What is the difference between BPSK and DPSK?

Binary PSK (BPSK): 00 phase = 0, 1800 phase = 1
The receiver checks the degree of signal wave if it is 0o, it will be read as 0 and if its180o it
will be read as 1.
Differential PSK (DPSK): same phase = 0, opposite phase = 1
The receiver checks if the phase is same as previous or not and read it as 0 for same phase and
1 for phase change.

17. What is the spectral efficiency of the Quadrature PSK?

Ans. 2bps/Hz theoretical efficiency

18. What wave parameters are modulated in QAM?

Ans. Amplitude and phase are modulated.

19. What is the maximum spectral efficiency for 16/32/64 QAM?

16 QAM is 4bps/Hz
32 QAM is 5bps/Hz
64 QAM is 6bps/Hz

20. 16/32/64 QAM constellations are compact drawings of different QAM encodings.
How many dots per quadrant would be in a16/32/64 QAM representation?
In 16 there will be 4 dots per quadrant
In 32 there will be 8 dots per quadrant
In 64 there will be 16 dots per quadrant

21. Define Baseband transmissions

Ans. Transmissions where the whole wireless channel bandwidth is used for only one
information stream

22. Define Broadband transmissions

Ans. Transmissions where the wireless channel bandwidth is used for many independent
information streams simultaneously.

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23. Define Spread Spectrum transmission?
Ans. Transmissions where information to be transmitted is spread over more bandwidth than
the absolute minimum necessary.

24. Name two advantages of spread spectrum transmissions

1. It spreads the transmission power over the spectrum
2. Resists narrow band interference (jamming)

25. Name the main spread spectrum transmission techniques

Frequency Hopping (FHSS)
Direct Sequence (DSSS)

26. What is the basic idea of Frequency Hopping (FH)?

Ans. Change carrier frequency according to a code (like a song).

27. How can a receiver decode a transmission using FH?

Ans. Receiver can decode it only if it knows the hopping code

28. What is the basic idea of Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS)?
Ans. Mix up the information bit stream with a bit pattern code of much higher frequency

29. How can a receiver decode a DSSS transmission?

Ans. Receiver can decode it only if it knows the bit pattern code

30. What are the main ways of sharing access to wireless channels?
FDMA Frequency Division multiple access
TDMA Time Division multiple access
CDMA Code Division multiple access

32. Define FDMA

Ans. In FDMA you can speak at any time with your own pitched voice. Each one has its own
frequency but they can talk anytime.

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31. Define TDMA
Ans. In TDMA only one can talk at a time and others have to wait for their turn. Everyone
can use the whole frequency of the channel for an amount of time.

32. Define CDMA

Ans. In CDMA, one can speak at any time to someone who knows his language. CDMA is an
application of spread spectrum techniques.

33. What is DS-CDMA?

Ans. It is Direct Sequence Code Division.

34. What is FH-CDMA?

Ans. It is Frequency Hopping Code Division.

35. In a DS-CDMA wireless channel each user has a unique modulation code. What is
the necessary property these user codes must have so that the information can be
retrieved from the channel?
Ans. Each user gets his own orthogonal code and receiver must know this code (language) in
order to retrieve the information.

36. What is OFDM?

Ans. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing is an FDMA transmission technique using
multiple orthogonal carriers.

37. Give an example of wireless standard using OFDM

Ans. used in Wifi 802.11 a/g and Wimax 802.16

38. How are the OFDM sub-carriers chosen?

Ans. They are chosen to be orthogonal to each other i.e. the peak of
one is at the null of others.

39. Can different OFDM sub-carriers be modulated by different modulation techniques,

for instance some modulated by BPSK and others by 16-QAM
Ans. Yes, OFDM supports adaptive modulation depending on the channel conditions

40. What is adaptive encoding and what are its benefits?

Ans. Adaptive encoding permits the modulation of sub-carriers using an encoding technique,
which is optimal for the channel conditions.

41. What are the advantages of OFDM versus other transmission techniques?
Highly efficient use of the bandwidth
Robust to narrowband jamming
Efficient DSP algorithms for encoding and retrieving

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42. How is an OFDMA channel shared between its users?
Ans. OFDMA is a hybrid FDMA + TDMA access method to a shared channel. Here each
user gets a subset of the sub-carriers for a time slot.

43. Define (Non) Line of Sight communications

Ans. NLOS is a communications in which the source of the signal cant be directly seen by
the receiver.

44. How do waves reach a NLOS receiver?

Ans. The only way the electromagnetic waves can reach a NLOS receiver is through
reflection, refraction and scattering.

45. What is reflection/refraction/scattering?

Reflection waves bounce off hard surfaces
Diffraction waves bent around hard edges
Scattering waves bounce off from an obstacle with a comparable size to the wavelength

46. What is the Doppler frequency shift?

Ans. It states that frequency changes with the speed of the source.

47. How does the direction in which, a source travel relative to a receiver influence the
Doppler frequency shift?
Ans. Frequency is higher when source is travelling
towards the receiver and frequency is lower when
travelling away from the receiver.

48. What is MIMO?

Ans. In Multiple Input Multiple Outputs (MIMO), transmitter sends multiple streams on
multiple transmit antennas and receives it on multiple receiver antennas.

49. Give an example of wireless standards using MIMO

Ans. 802.11n Wi-Fi, 802.16 WiMax, LTE

50. What are the advantages of MIMO?

Ans. Achieve higher data throughput or link reliability for the same transmit power and
channel bandwidth
More bps/Hz by spreading the power over multiple antennas and diversity coding
Same data stream sent from multiple transmitter antennas with different encoding

51. What is a 2:4 MIMO?

Ans. 2 transmit antennas and 4 receiver antennas.

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52. What are the main industry drivers for wireless networks?
Ans. Main drivers are
Evolution of wired LANs to wireless LANs
Evolution of wired telephony to mobile telephony.

53. What are the attributes of wireless networks visible to end-users?

Bandwidth (downlink, uplink bps)
Distance range (cm, m, km)
Mobility (fix, max km/h speed)
Quality of Service (best effort, rate guarantees, latency guarantees)

54. How do mobile telephony standards and mobile computing standards overlap in the
WAN?
Ans. They support similar and comparable services: Voice, Data, Video and Mobility.

55. What are the main categories of wireless networks based on area coverage?
WPAN Personal Area Networks (e.g. Bluetooth)
WLAN Local Area Networks (e.g. Wifi)
WMAN Metropolitan Area Networks (WiMax)
WRAN Regional Area Networks

56. What is a relevant IEEE standard for a WPAN/WLAN/WMAN/WRAN?

WPAN 802.15 Bluetooth (10m)
WLAN 802.11 Wifi (20-100m)
WMAN
o 802.16 WiMax (1-4 km)
o 802.16a /d fix wireless access
o 802.16 e low mobility access (60 km/h)
o 802.20 high mobility access (250 km/h)
WRAN 802.22 (40-100km)

57. What are the spectrum frequencies used by Wi-Fi standards?

Ans. 2.4GH, 5GHz

58. What is the maximum channel bandwidth in 802.11n channels?

Ans. 40Mhz

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59. What are the main three ways of using MIMO transmit antennas in 802.11n?
Spatial Multiplexing (SM)
Space-Time Block Coding (STBC)
Beam Forming

60. What is the goal of MIMO Spatial Multiplexing?

Ans. Increase data rate

61. How does Spatial Multiplexing work?

Ans. It divides the information stream between multiple antennas and putting it together at the
receiver.

62. What is the goal of MIMO Space-Time Block Coding?

Ans. Increases link reliability

63. How does MIMO Space-Time Block Coding work?

Ans. Redundant transmission of the same information stream through multiple antennas.

64. What is the goal of MIMO Beam Forming?

Ans. Concentrate the transmission power towards a particular receiver by adaptation to
channel conditions.

65. What modulations schemes are used by 802.16n and how do they change?
Ans. BPSK, QPSK, 16-QAM, 64-QAM modulation schemes are negotiated depending on the
channel conditions.

66. What is the 802.11 Wi-Fi Media Access Control policy?

Ans. Protocol CSMA/CA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access) is used for Collision Avoidance.
Signal is sent only if channel is idle for DIFS sec, incase channel is busy the binary
backoff occurs.

67. What is the Network Allocation Vector (NAV) and how is it used?
Ans. In 802.16 Wimax each node has NAV which tells the node when it can try to access the
medium. Each node updates its NAV based on frame duration.

68. Why isnt the NAV sufficient to always detect collisions?

Ans. Because there are hidden terminals that the sender cannot see or hear and they may send
at the same time (so multiple senders may send at the same time)

69. How does Collision Avoidance work?

Ans. Collision Avoidance works by reserving the channel for the sender for a certain amount
of time and the receiver acknowledges this reservation with a Clear to Send message;
in this way all stations that see either the sender or the receiver will be informed.

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70. What is an 802.11 Wi-Fi ad-hoc network?
Ans. It is simplest construction for WLAN which connects PC (laptop)
with peer to peer model by wireless card

71. What is an 802.11 Wi-Fi Infrastructure Network?

Data exchange by Access Point Infrastructure
Use LAN, cable modem or ADSL to connect to WAN
Infrastructure Wireless LAN combined with wired and other
wireless networks

72. How do the 802.16 WMAN standards differ in terms mobility and LOS operations?
802.16 is LOS only and Fixed
802 16 a/d is NLOS but still Fixed service
802.16 e is NLOS and low mobility
802.20 is NLOS and high mobility (supports vehicle speeds)

73. What are the target markets for IEEE 802.20/802.22?

(802.20), Consumer-Class who need Highly-Mobile Wireless Access
(802.22), Consumer-Class who need Fixed Wireless Access, mainly Rural or Remote Users.

74. How does the fixed WiMax (802.16d) MAC differs from 802.11 MAC?
Ans. Fixed WiMax (802.16d) MAC is Non-contention, centralized control and grant based
MAC while 802.11 MAC is contention and distributed based MAC (CSMA/CA).

75. What equipment plays the role of central arbiter in 802.16d WiMax networks?
Ans. The Base Station

76. What is an Uplink-Map (UL-MAP) in an 802.16d WiMax network?

Ans. A schedule information to the Subscriber Station by Base station in the network about
when they are allowed to send information in uplink subframe.

77. How does a Subscriber Station know when to transmit in an 802.16d WiMax
network?
Ans. It gets this information by receiving the Uplink Map schedule through the downlink
subframe.

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78. How do 802.11 Wi-Fi networks differ from 802.16 WiMax networks in terms of
range/number of users/channel configuration/Quality of Service?

802.11 Wi-Fi networks 802.16 WiMax networks

Range Optimized for 100m Optimized for 7-10 km Up to 50 km

Number of users 10s of users 1000s of users

Channel Fixed 20 MHz Channel 1.5 MHz to 20 MHz Channels,

configuration Size chosen by operator

Quality of Service No delay or throughput Guarantees QoS (quality of service)

guarantees

79. What is the dominant wireless channel sharing technique in 3G/4G cellular
networks?
Ans. Long Term Evolution (LTE)

80. What are the goals of 4G cellular networks?

Ans. IP-based anytime, anywhere voice, data, and multimedia telephony.

81. How do LTE advanced downlink/uplink rates differ from LTE downlink/uplink
rates?
Ans. LTE advanced ranges are approximately 5 times higher.
Downlink LTE 20Mbps, LTE-A 100 Mbps;
Uplink LTE 10Mbps, LTE-A 60 Mbps

82. What is a distributed system?

Ans. Collection of autonomous computers communicating via a network and equipped with
network aware software.

83. Give an example of a distributed system from your daily experience

Workstation or PCs
Servers (file management, login access, etc.)

84. What are the main elements of a distributed system?

Processors (PCs, workstations, servers)
Connected by a network and
Running operating systems or middleware supporting either
Network wide inter-process communications or
Distributed objects

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85. Name the characteristics of distributed systems
Resource sharing
Concurrency
Transparency
Fault Tolerance
Openness
Scalability

86. Name the resources typically shared by distributed systems

Hardware devices
Processing capacity
Data

87. What are the two main models of managing resources in distributed systems?
1. Resource Managers software managing a type of resource (servers)
2. Object Managers collection of functions and data specific to a class of objects

88. Define concurrency in distributed systems

Ans. Parallel execution of multiple individual computations

89. Name the sources of concurrent execution in distributed systems

1. Users request services concurrently
2. User actions might cause multiple client processes to request various resources
3. Server processes run concurrently
One or more server process for each type of resource
Typically located on other computers

90. What is transparency in distributed systems?

Ans. Hide from the user and the application programmers various concerns caused by the
distributed nature of the system.

91. Name three types of distributed systems transparency

Location transparency
Concurrency transparency
Failure transparency
Scaling transparency

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92. Define Location / Concurrency / Failure / Scaling transparency
Location transparency no need to know where objects reside
Concurrency transparency transparent access of parallel processes to shared
information objects
Failure transparency hide hardware and software failures from the user
Scaling transparency expand system without affecting service or requiring
software re-work

93. What is fault tolerance in a distributed system?

Ans. A property of systems to function properly in the presence of faults

94. Name the four necessary steps in dealing with faults in a fault tolerant system?
1. Fault detection
2. Fault isolation
3. Fault masking
4. Fault recovery

95. How is fault isolation different from fault detection?

Ans. Fault detection identifies the presence of any fault anywhere in the system but doesnt
tell us exactly where so this is identified by Fault isolation.

96. What does system availability measure?

Ans. It measures the fault tolerance of the system.

97. Name the two essential approaches to building fault tolerant systems
1. Hardware redundancy (standby spare hardware)
2. Software checkpoints (save consistent state of the system as checkpoint)

98. How do software checkpoints work?

Ans. A checkpoint stores information about a consistent state of the system at a point in time.
Later in time if a fault occurs, the system is restored from the checkpoint

99. Define openness in distributed systems

Ans. A property of a system showing whether it can be easily extended by its users.
Key interfaces are public and well documented
Multiple vendors interface conformance

100. Define scalability in distributed systems

Ans. A property of systems to withstand growth without re-work i.e. Resources can be added
as demand increases.

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101. What categories of user requirements must be addressed by a distributed system?
Functionality
Quality of Service
Reconfigurability

102. What types of Quality of Service requirements should be considered by a

distributed system?
Ans. Performance, Reliability, Consistency, Security

103. What are the main issues in Distributed Systems design?

1. Naming
2. Communication
3. Software architecture
4. Workload allocation
5. Consistency maintenance

104. What are Names in Distributed Systems?

Ans. Names are system wide resource identifiers. When translated into local identifiers they
can be used to access the resource. e.g. path name of a file translated into file id.

105. What is a Name Space in Distributed Systems?

Ans. A set of names associated with a type of resource.

106. Give an example of a flat name space and an example of a hierarchical name space
Hierarchical name space desktop folder, Internet domains
Flat name space files names in a folder, account ID

107. What is a Name Service in a Distributed System?

Ans. A distributed service assisting in name translation i.e. Create and query mappings

108. Define communications in Distributed Systems

Ans. Transfer of data between a sending process and a receiving process

109. Define synchronized communication

Ans. Sender or receiver stop and wait for an action performed at the other end.

110. What is the difference between a synchronous and an asynchronous message sent?
Synchronous (blocking send) sender blocks waiting for a reply
Asynchronous sender does not block, picks up the reply later

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111. Name the three steps of a client-server communication pattern
1. Request from client to server process
2. Execution of request at the server process
3. Transmission of reply to the client

112. Describe the group multicast communication pattern

Processes join/quit a named group
Sender sends to the group, each receiver executes a receive

113. What do you understand by middleware in a distributed system?

Ans. A layer of software, supporting distributed services found between the OS and the
Application layers.

114. What distributed programming services are typically supported by middleware?

Distributed services: name service, RPC, multicast groups
Distributed objects support: CORBA

115. Name three workload allocation models?

1. Workstation-server model
2. Processor-pool model
3. Shared-memory multiprocessors

116. What is the difference between workstation-server and the processor-pool

allocation models?
1. Workstation-server model
Client process on desktop workstation
Server process on dedicated server node
2. Processor-pool model
Client process can distribute workload over a pool of server
Processes allocated to processors for their life time

117. Describe the data consistency problem addressed by atomic updates

Ans. Data update consistency (atomic update) addresses the problem of how can one writer
update a data set distributed over the network so that all readers get a consistent data set.

118. Describe the data consistency problem addressed by atomic multicast

Ans. Data replication consistency (atomic multicast) addresses the problem of how to
distribute copies of data to a multicast group and make sure that no group member
modifies it before everyone gets it.

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119. Describe the cache consistency problem
Ans. It deals with the problem of how to keep copies of data cached in local memories up to
date with the master copy.

120. Describe the clock consistency problem

Ans. It dealt with the issue of how to synchronize local clocks via messages send over the
network.

121. What is the root cause for local time variations in computers?
Ans. Local time is kept by oscillating crystals that are drifting in time.

122. Assume that the event E1, produced in the processor P1 is time stamped with a time
value T1 and that event E2, produced in the processor P2 is time-stamped with the
time value T2. If T1=T2, can we say that the events happened at the same time?

Ans. As clocks of different processors drift, even if two events are time stamped with same
value it doesnt means that they happened at the same time.

123. What is UTC?

Ans. Coordinated Universal Time is the international time standard by which the world
regulates its clocks and time. Time signals are broadcasted from satellite radio sources.

124. How does clock drift compensation work?

If UTC time > Local time, set the local time to UTC (i.e. skip a few milliseconds)
If UTC time < Local time, compensate in software (i.e. go slow and let UTC to catch
up over N time units)

125. What does the Christians network time algorithm establish about the possible
precision in time synchronization?
Ans. The possible precision interval grows with the roundtrip time from
the node to the time source

126. What is the Network Time Protocol?

Ans. An Internet service allowing clients to synchronize their clocks to UTC

127. What is the difference between a Stratum 1 and a Stratum 2 NTP server?
Stratum 1 servers: These are primary servers which are directly connected to a radio
clock receiving UTC signals
Stratum 2 servers: These are secondary servers which get synchronized to primary
servers

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128. What are the main synchronization modes in NTP?
Multicast mode
Procedure-call mode

129. What is the typical NTP synchronization precision?

Ans. Around 30 ms

P130. Why is the definition of a logical time necessary?

Ans. Because one cant use physical time to reliably order events in distributed systems.

131. Define logical time

Ans. A partial order of events based on the happened-before (=>) relationship.

132. What are the two rules of the happened-before relationship?

The order of two events in the same process is the order we observe them
The event of sending a message comes before the event of receiving it

133. What is a real-time system?

Ans. Systems where the computer is monitoring and/or controlling something that interacts
with one or more physical processes on a timetable basis.

134. What is an embedded system?

Ans. It is a computer system with a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electrical
system, often with real-time computing constraints.

135. What are the two types of devices used by real-time controllers to exercise control
over physical processes and what is their role?
Sensors: their role is to feed relevant data about the physical process to the controller.
Actuators: their role is to exercise control by changing some parameters of the
physical process

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136. What is a real-time deadline?
Ans. The latest point in time when a task/process must respond to an external event.

137. How do soft real-time deadlines differ from hard real-time deadlines?
In soft real-time systems, there is still value in a missed deadline.
In hard real-time systems, there is no value in a missed deadline.

138. Name two possible design strategies for real-time systems

Polled-Loop Systems
Interrupt-Driven Systems
Round Robin Systems

139. What is a polled-loop system?

Ans. A system where events are being detected by periodically checking if it is happened or
not (usually a hardware flag).

140. What is the disadvantage of the polled-loop design strategy?

Ans. Too much processing power is used up for checking up event occurrence because of
continuous software loops.

141. Define the interrupt mechanism in real-time systems

Ans. A mechanism by which a computation is temporarily interrupted due to the occurrence
of an external event which must be dealt with immediately.

142. What is the difference between hardware versus software Interrupt dispatching?
Hardware Dispatching - Multiple interrupt signals are processed by interrupt
controller.
Software Dispatching - A single interrupt signal is processed by a software handler

143. What do we understand by a context switch when an interrupt is processed?

Ans. Saving the context of the interrupted program and restoring it after the interrupt has been
processed.

144. How are tasks (or processes) executed in a round-robin scheduling?

Several tasks are executed one after another, and each task being assigned a fixed time
slice. If a task does not complete it continues in the next time slice
On time-slice interrupt, The context of the current task is saved and the context of the
next task must be restored

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