CS 370 - Intro. to Scientific Computing Fall Semester 2009, Section 001 MWF 9:05 - 9:55am, Claxton 205

Instructor Office Hours: Mo (10:00-11:00am) or by appointment, CL318 Teaching Assistant: Andrey Puretskiy, Office Hours: (see Lab Section below), Office Phone 974-4196 Possible online book suppliers for our textbook are: Bookpool, Efollet, and allbookstores.com. The Lab Section for this class meets in CL103 (Cetus Lab) on Friday from 2:30pm to 5:30pm. This 3-hour period will serve as office hours for the TA to provide guidance and help on all assigned programming tasks. Please email the TA by the end of class each Friday if you plan to attend lab/office hours. Click here to access the SAIS (Student Assessment of Instruction System) for course evaluations. Bring the the last page of the CS 370 evaluation (the one that lists the class number and thanks you for participating) to class to receive 5 extra credit quiz points. EECS Colloquim: Speaker: Dr. Anjela Y. Govan, Northrop-Grumman - Information Systems, Morrisville, NC Date/Time/Location: Friday, October 23, 2009 (9:00am-10:00am, Claxton 205) Title: Finding Signal In the Noise: direct-sequence spread spectrum methods Abstract: Digital signal processing is a vibrant area of engineering that relies on multitude of mathematical theory and methods to develop and improve telecommunications. The problem of telecommunications is centered on accurately transmitting information from point A to point B. Spread spectrum is one of many approaches used to modify the signal before sending it through the transmission medium (wires, air, etc). A spread spectrum technique direct-sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) multiplies the data signal by a "noise" signal (called spread code). Seemingly easy procedure creates a low power signal with wide bandwidth. This new signal is hard to detect and jam which makes DSSS an appealing technique used by the military. A commercial application of DSSS (3G technology) has allowed the wireless cell phone customers to use the same signal frequencies at the same time. However, DSSS technology comes with challenges including synchronization (aligning the phase of the received signal). This talk will examine the basics of the digital signal processing, direct-sequence spread spectrum, and an innovative method (based on linear algebra) aimed at solving the problem of synchronization and even blind despreading (extracting the data signal without knowing the spread code). We will also use a demo written in python to demonstrate the Dominant Mode Despreading Algorithm on randomly generated data signals. Follow-up Meetings and Lunch: From 11:30am to 1:00pm (in Claxton Conference Room 202), Daniel Friend will give a brief overview of Northrop-Grumman's Digital Signal Processing Lab followed by a pizza lunch. All interested students are invited. At 1:00pm, Dr. Govan and Mr. Friend will be able to meet with students interested in careers with Northrup-Grumman in the Claxton Reading Room (234). Students are encouraged to bring their resumes to this session. Click here for the formal colloquim announcement (PDF). Dr. Govan's presentation slides (in Powerpoint) are available here.