School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

ECE 438 Digital Signal Processing with Applications

Class Information

Fall 2012

Prerequisites: ECE 301 and ECE 302

Instructor: Professor Okan Ersoy

Office: MSEE 346

Phone: 765.494.6162

e-mail: ersoy@purdue.edu

Course Web Site https://www.projectrhea.org/rhea/index.php/2012_Fall_ECE_438_Ersoy

Previous Course Web Site https://engineering.purdue.edu/~ece438

Lab Web Site https://engineering.purdue.edu/VISE/ee438L/

VISE Lab Web Site https://engineering.purdue.edu/VISE/

Course Notes

Digital Signal Processing in a Nutshell, Vols. I and II, Jan Allebach and Krithika Chandrasekar. Volume can be ordered from: lulu.com.

Supplementary Reference (not a required text)

Digital Signal Processing, 4th edition, John G. Proakis and Dimitris G.Manolakis, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, ISBN10 0131873741 or ISBN13: 9780131873742, 2007.

Course Outcomes

A student who successfully fulfills the course requirements will have demonstrated:

• an understanding of linear time invariant

systems;

• the ability to manipulate discrete parameter signals;
• knowledge of how to use linear transforms;
• the ability to apply linear system analysis to engineering problems.

Lecture:

It is essential that you attend the lecture and take complete and accurate notes. While this is generally a good idea with any course, it is particularly important in this course, because the references do not contain all of the material that we will cover. We will not necessarily do everything the same way that it is done in the references. In particular, reading the published course notes Digital Signal Processing in a Nutshell should not be considered a substitute for attending class. On some days, I will follow these notes fairly closely. On other days, I may do things differently, or cover additional material and examples.</p>

Quizzes:

Starting during the second week of the semester, there will between 5 and 8 unannounced quizzes given during the semester on randomly selected days at the start of class. These quizzes will be of 5 –10 minutes duration, and will be intended to test how well you are staying caught up with the lecture material. They will be short questions that you should be able to answer if you have been attending class. There will be no quiz during the first week of class. If you miss a quiz because of a plant trip or illness, you will be allowed to make up the quiz, provided you submit suitable documentation. For a plant trip, this will require a letter documenting the visit along with a copy of your passenger coupon or other travel documentation. For illness, you will need a note from your doctor. In any case, your lowest quiz grade will be dropped.

Homeworks

Homework will be assigned on a weekly basis. Assignments will generally be due on Wednesday at 5:00PM. They will be posted on Wednesday during the preceding week. The assignments will be graded and returned to you, and solutions posted on the following Wednesday. There will be no homework assignments due on the week that an exam is given. No late assignments will be accepted for any reason. However, your lowest homework grade will be dropped as discussed below under Computation of Final Grade.</p>

The homework is a very important part of the course. You may read your lecture notes and the text, and think that you understand the material. However, when you attempt to work the homework problems, you will frequently find that you actually did not understand the material as well as you thought you did. Also, the problems on the exams will be very similar to the homework problems. Needless to say, your understanding of the material will not be improved if you simply copy your solutions from a friend. You will benefit most from the homework if you attempt to do the problems before consulting your friends. While it is perfectly reasonable to discuss your approach to solving the problems with a friend, the final write-up of the solution should be your own work.

Rules for Preparing your Solutions

The grader will have to handle a lot of paperwork for the course, and wade through many pages of handwritten solutions. It will be to your benefit in terms of maximizing your grade, and will be greatly appreciated by us if you adhere to the following four rules when preparing your assignments:

1. Do not use paper torn out of a spiral bound notebook.
2. Write on only one side of each page.
3. Put the problems in the proper order.
4. Staple the pages together before turning in the assignment.

MATLAB:

Knowledge of the MATLAB software environment will be a required part of this course. MATLAB is an integral part of the laboratory and will be required for solving many weekly homework assignments.

If you choose to work with others on MATLAB homework assignments, you must list all collaborators’ names at the top of the assignments. Remember that you may be responsible for knowing MATLAB in exams, so you are encouraged to work as independently as possible.

Laboratory:

The laboratory is in Room MSEE 190, the Video and Image Systems Engineering (VISE) Lab. You will be assigned to a 3 hour lab session which you must attend each week during the entire semester. You must attend and attempt the labs to pass the course, since you do get an hour of lab credit. All laboratory material is available at the web site https://engineering.purdue.edu/VISE/ee438L/. You are responsible for printing out and reviewing the labs in advance of your laboratory session. Each lab session will begin with a quiz covering the basic concepts underlying that week’s experiment.

If you or your lab partner must miss a lab session due to a plant trip, then you and your partner will have to do that lab separately. Thus the partner who does not miss the lab session will have to turn the lab in on time. Medical absences will be excused if they are documented. Absence due to a plant trip will only be excused if the Lab TA is notified ahead of time. Lab reports that are turned in late without an approved excuse will penalized at the rate of 10% of the grade per day past the date due. Students who miss a scheduled lab period will penalized at the rate of 10 points/hour of missed lab time. Students who show up after the quiz has been given will not be allowed to make it up.

You will also be able to use the laboratory during periods when it is not scheduled for use by ECE438 or another course to work on homework or laboratory experiments. Please observe the rules for laboratory use posted at the web site https://engineering.purdue.edu/VISE/ee438L/ at all times.

A number of the experiments require that you listen to digitally processed audio signals. You will need to bring your own headset to the laboratory to do this.

All lab sections will meet during the first week of the semester.

Examinations:

There will be 3 one-hour exams, which will be given during the normal class period. The dates for these exams are fixed as indicated on the attached syllabus, and cannot be changed. Please schedule your plant trips and interviews so that they do not conflict with these dates. No exams can be taken early. If you must miss an exam for any reason, you should discuss it with the instructor as far as possible in advance of the date of the exam. At the instructor’s discretion, you may be allowed to make up the exam, or you may be required to let your final exam count for that portion of your grade, as discussed below. The instructor’s decision will be based on the merits of your case. Only under extenuating circumstances will you be permitted to make up an exam if you have not notified the instructor in advance that you will miss it. All examinations will be closed book. No crib sheets will be permitted. However, some tables or formulas will be provided. This will be announced in advance of the exam. Each exam will typically contain four problems that are similar to homework problems.

Help Session:

We will be holding a weekly help session on Monday afternoon or evening to go over the homework. During the weeks when an exam will be given, the help session will serve as a review for the exam. You will benefit from attending this help session, not only because you can get answers to your questions; but also because you can learn what questions your classmates have, and what the answers are for those questions, as well. You will benefit much more from the help session if you try to work the problems in advance, and come prepared with questions. The instructor will only answer the students’ questions. The help session will not consist of a review “lecture.

Computation of Final Grade:

Your final grade will be determined as a weighted combination of the homework, laboratory, hour exams, and final exam. Your lowest homework grade and your lowest quiz grade will be dropped. If your lowest hour exam grade is less than your final exam grade, then the grade for that exam will be replaced by your final exam grade. Conversely, if the average of your three hour exam grades (before the replacement mentioned above) is higher than your final exam, then this average will replace the fraction 13/21 of your final exam grade. Your letter grade will be based solely on your weighted final grade. This means that failure to do the homework or laboratory assignments can definitely hurt your grade, regardless of how well you do on the quizzes and exams. All grade components, except your lab grade, will be normalized to a mean of 70 and standard deviation of 15 prior to computation of the final grade. For your lab, you will receive a letter grade, which will be converted to a numerical value and combined with the rest of the components of the weighted final grade. The weighting of the various grade components in determining your final grade is shown below:

Laboratory 25% (0.3 for quiz and 0.7 for lab report)

Homework 10%

Quizzes 05%

3 Hour Exams (13% ea.) 39%

Final exam 21%

To give you some idea how the grades run in this course, the table below lists the average GPA in some of the past semesters.

Most recently, the grade distribution was as follows:

A+ – 3, A – 3, A- – 4, total number of A’s = 10;

B+ – 4, B – 6, B- – 4, total number of B’s = 14;

C+ –9, C –3, C- –4, total number of C’s = 16;

D+ –3, D –5, D- –3, total number of D’s = 11;

F – 1, total number of F’s = 1.

The total enrollment in the course was 52.

If you dispute your grade on any homework or hour exam, you have one week from the date that the graded paper was returned to you to request a change in the grade. After this time, no further change in grade will be considered. When you return your paper for a regrade, please attach a sheet to the front, indicating where you think that your paper was graded incorrectly. Also, date the sheet.

Academic Dishonesty

The members of the ECE faculty expect every member of the Purdue community to practice honorable and ethical behavior both inside and outside the classroom. Any actions that might unfairly improve a student’s score on homework, quizzes, or examinations will be considered cheating and will not be tolerated. Examples of cheating include (but are not limited to):

• Sharing results or other information during an examination.
• Bringing forbidden material or devices to an examination.
• Working on an exam before or after the official time allowed.
• Requesting a regrade of answers or work that has been altered.
• Submitting homework that is not your own work or engaging in forbidden homework collaborations.
• Representing as your own work anything that is the result of the work of someone else.

At the professor’s discretion, cheating on an assignment or examination will result in a reduced score, a zero score, or a failing grade for the course. All occurrences of academic dishonesty will be reported to the Assistant Dean of Students and copied to the ECE Assistant Head for Education. If there is any question as to whether a given action might be construed as cheating, please see the professor or the TA before you engage in any such action.

Website

Copies of all class handouts including this one will be available at the ECE 438 course wiki: https://www.projectrhea.org/rhea/index.php/2012_Fall_ECE_438_Ersoy. The previous website https://engineering.purdue.edu/~ece438 can also be consulted.

Back to ECE438, Fall 2012, Prof. Ersoy