*T3240810*

T324/L

Course Examination 2008 KEEPING AHEAD IN INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES

Monday 13 October 2008 10.00 am 1.00 pm

Time allowed: 3 hours There are two parts to this paper; attempt both of them and follow carefully the instructions in each. Part 1. 40% of the examination marks. This part contains eight questions and you should attempt all of them. You are advised to spend about 70 minutes on this part. Write all of your answers in the main answer book provided. Part 2. 60% of the examination marks. This part contains three questions, of which you should attempt two. You are advised to spend about 110 minutes on this part. You must use a supplementary answer book for each question attempted. Suggested word counts are included for some questions. These are indicative only; you are not expected to count words, and there are no penalties for shorter or longer answers. At the end of the examination Check that you have written your personal identifier and examination number on each answer book used. Failure to do so will mean that your work cannot be identified. Put all your used answer books together with your signed desk record on top. Fasten them in the top left corner with the round paper fastener. Attach this question paper to the back of the answer books with the flat paper clip. T324 Note on Exam Articles In this paper you will find references to articles found in two journals and one conference proceedings. These articles form part of the required reading for part 2 of

Copyright 2008 The Open University

the paper, and were distributed in printed form to students who sat this exam. For copyright reasons we are unable to print these articles alongside the exam paper once the paper has been released for sale, but the three articles should be available from IEEE Xplore by searching a suitable combination of search terms. Exam articles are produced separately for each exam paper and given to students both before and at the final exam.

PART 1

This part carries 40% of the total examination marks. You should attempt all the questions. Each question carries five marks. You are advised to spend about 70 minutes on this part, about 9 minutes per question. Write your answers in the main answer book provided, start each answer on a new page. For full marks, calculations must be clearly presented so that your steps can be easily followed.

Question 1

(a) At a distance of 2 km from a transmitter the signal to noise ratio (S/N) at a receiver is 36 dB. Express this as a power ratio, giving your reasoning. (b) What will the S/N be, in dB, 4 km from the transmitter, assuming the noise power is independent of receiver position, and the signal travels through free space? (c) Assume now that the signal propagates through an urban environment and the appropriate propagation model is an inverse fourth power model. What will be the S/N in this case, in dB, 4 km from the transmitter? (Assume again that the S/N 2 km from the transmitter is 36 dB and the noise power is independent of receiver position.) (5 marks)

Question 2

(a) Explain what is meant by QAM. (b) How many bits does each symbol represent in 64-QAM? (c) What is the signalling rate in baud if a 64-QAM system is used to transmit data at 48 Mbps? (5 marks)

Question 3

Explain the difference between identification and authentication. State two methods of authenticating a user. (5 marks) The context for this question is an online search for material relating to new standards for audio and video coding in portable consumer products. (a) For a search for general, non-technical information for the new standards, give examples of some of the combinations of search terms that are likely to be successful, showing how they are combined, and suggest three types of source that should be investigated. (b) For a search for technical information on how the new standards work, suggest two specialist sources, or types of source, to consult, and mention factors that might affect the availability of these sources. (5 marks)

Question 4

Question 5

What are the main differences between the structure and operation of a wireless sensor network and a predominantly wired network such as the internet? (5 marks)

T324/L

TURN OVER 3

Question 6

Explain, in about 75 words, the difference between flooding and gossiping as techniques for distributing information in a wireless sensor network. Include one disadvantage of each technique. (5 marks) What is a system map? Explain, with the aid of a system map, the meaning of the terms environment, system boundary, subsystem and element. (5 marks) Explain the difference between civil society and social capital. (5 marks)

Question 7

Question 8

T324/L

PART 2

This part carries 60% of the total examination marks. You should attempt two questions from this part. Each question carries thirty marks. Use a separate supplementary answer book for each answer. You are advised to spend about 110 minutes on this part, 55 minutes per question. For full marks, calculations must be clearly presented so that your steps can be easily followed.

Question 9

This part of the question is based on: Friedrich K. Jondral (2007), Cognitive Radio: A Communications Engineering View, IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 2833. (Note there is an error in Figure 2 of the article; the vertical axis should have units dBm/MHz, not dBm.) (a) (i) (ii) Summarise in about 100 words what the author means by cognitive radio. A feature of spectrum pooling identified in the article is: Hidden LU stations must be reliably detected by the RU so as not to disturb them. Explain the hidden station problem in about 150 words and with the aid of a diagram. Your answer should include: an explanation of why the scanning process described in the article section Spectrum awareness might be affected by the hidden station problem, and how the technique of distributed detection could solve the problem. (9 marks) (b) The author mentions two other applications that allow comparatively uncontrolled spectrum access, WiFi and UWB. (i) Explain in about 150 words how contention is avoided in WiFi networks. Your answer should discuss both carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) (distributed coordination function), and contention-free periods (point coordination function). (ii) Briefly describe how UWB underlays signals under existing services. Answer in about 100 words. (9 marks)

T324/L

TURN OVER 5

(c)

(i)

What is multi-path interference, and what are its causes? Answer in about 100 words, using diagrams as appropriate. The article mentions two technologies that are resistant to multi-path, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and multiple input multiple output (MIMO).

(ii)

Explain what OFDM is, and why it performs well under multi-path conditions. Your answer should be about 150 words long and should include a diagram.

(iii) Explain what MIMO is, and why it performs well under multi-path conditions. Your answer should be about 100 words long, using diagrams as appropriate. (12 marks) Question 10 (a) Explain in about 200 words why power supply can be problematic in the design and operation of WSNs, and what techniques are being used to address this issue. (6 marks) (b) It can be shown that under certain conditions related to antenna design, the propagation loss by a radio wave in free space is given by the formula

PR / PT = [ /(4 d )]2 Where PR and PT are received and transmitted powers, is the wavelength and d is the distance between transmitter and receiver. In a recent paper it is claimed that a simple formula for calculating free space propagation loss in dB for the 2.437 GHz channel is 20 log d + 40. Show that the 40 dB term in this expression corresponds to the factor

[ /(4 )]2
(Hint: the frequency and wavelength of an electromagnetic wave in free space are related by the expression c = f , where c is the speed of light,
3 108 ms 1 .)

(6 marks)

(c)

This part of the question is based on: Al-Sakib Khan Pathan, Hyung-Loo Lee and Choong Seon Hong (2006), Security in Wireless Sensor Networks: Issues and Challenges. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Communications Technology (ICACT 2006), Phoenix Park, Korea, 2022 February, 2006, pp. 10431048. Explain in your own words: (i) why many traditional security techniques cannot, in general, be used for WSNs;
(6 marks)

(ii)

what is meant by a sybil attack, and how a WSN can be defended against it;
(6 marks)

T324/L

(iii) what is meant by holistic security, and some of the problems in achieving it.
(6 marks)
Question 11

(a) An organisation has offices in a town centre. An access control system is to be introduced to prevent unauthorised use of its car-park. Electricallyoperated barriers are placed on the entrances, and these can be opened by smart-cards read by card-readers adjacent to the barrier, or remotely under control of the security staff. All staff are issued with their own smart-card, and visitors need to speak to security staff via an intercom at the entrance in order to gain access. The security department is responsible for issuing the cards to staff members, using information provided by the personnel department. Staff members need to tell the security department about any visitors they are expecting. (i) What does it mean to call the access-control system a socio-technical system?
(2 marks)

(ii)

Answer the system question: What, basically, does the system do for this system.
(2 marks)

(iii) Draw a system map of the access control system. Your map should include some components that are part of the system and some that are part of the environment. Explain how you decided where to put the components and subsystems.
(6 marks)

(b) This part of the question is based on: Viktor W. A. Mbarika, Muhammadou Kah, Kabily Samake, and Jeffrey G. Sumrall (2007), Information Technology Access: Cybercaf diffusion in Sub-Saharan Africa, IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp. 4956. (i) (ii) State in one sentence the main argument of the paper.
(2 marks)

List four points made in the paper to support the main argument.
(4 marks)

(iii) Say what evidence, if any, the paper uses for the points you identified in part (ii). (You should not reproduce the evidence, just state what evidence is used.)
(4 marks)

(c)

Copy and complete the table shown below, using data from Table 1 of Mbarika et al.
Country Tanzania Kenya Ghana GDP per capita Telephone lines per 100 persons Internet users per 100 persons

(4 marks)
T324/L TURN OVER 7

(d) For each of the three columns of data in the table of part (c), give a reason why care needs to be taken in drawing conclusions based in the numbers given. (Some considerations affect all three columns. Make sure you have at least three different points that between them give at least one reason to be careful of the data in each of the three columns.) Suggest at least three items of additional information that would be needed to interpret the data.
(6 marks)

[END OF QUESTION PAPER]

T324/L