Circuit Theory and Communications

Lecturer: Michel T. Ivrlac

Target Audience: Master EI

Language: English

Next Exam: tbd (no responsibility is taken for the correctness of this information)

Additional Information: TUMonline and Moodle

Lectures/Tutorials in Winter Semester 2024/25

Content

The high level of abstraction makes information theory a versatile and powerful tool for the analysis and optimization of a wide variety of communication systems. On the other hand, information theory has no concept of the flow of energy that accompanies the flow of information. Consequently, some important aspects of communication, like transmit power or noise covariance are by no means straight forward. In this lecture, we introduce effective methods which overcome this inherent limitation of information theory. We deal with this problem from a classic circuit theory point of view. This allows correct assessment of the energy flow in communication systems and thereby enables an information theoretic analysis and optimization which is consistent with the underlying physics of the communication system under investigation. After developing appropriate circuit theoretic channel models, we analyze the performance potential of different kinds of multi-antenna radio communication systems. Besides the study of channel capacity, we also develop interesting insight into receive and transmit antenna gain, super-directivity and super-resolution. A knowledge of circuit- and information theory is helpful but not strictly required, as all necessary methods are introduced during the lecture.