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Course

Number

Telecommunication Networks

ELEC 463

Examination

Date

Final Examination

Section

December 12, 2002

Time

3 Hours

# of pages

Instructor (s)

Dr. M. Mehmet Ali

Material allowed :

No

Yes

Calculators allowed :

No

Yes
X

Special Instructions:

Attempt all six questions.

Handwriting should be clear and readable.
Whenever possible include diagrams to make solutions more clear.
Students should return the question paper after the exam.
All the answers should be in the answering book.
Some formulas that may be needed are provided at the end of the exam.
Question 1. (10 points) Describe the operation of a Time-Slot-Interchange (TSI) switch. Determine
the number of 64Kbps voice connections such a switch can support .
Question 2.
i)
ii)
iii)

( 20 points) Consider p-persistent CSMA-CD protocol,

Describe the operation of this protocol.
Assuming that there are n users contending during a contention interval, derive the
expression for maximum success probability during a minislot.
Determine the maximum success probability as n increases.
Derive the expression for the maximum throughput for this protocol.

Question 3. (25 points) A 128,000bytes message will be transmitted from the source to the
destination in the network shown below. Assume that the signal propagates at a speed of 2 * 10 5
km/second and each hop has a bit error rate of p = 10 6 . The network limits the packets to a maximum

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size of 2,000bytes and each packet has a 32-byte header. Assume that the size of ACK/NACK packet is
40bytes and that the transmission of ACK/NACK packets are error free. There are no queueing delays,
the processing times are negligible and the time out duration has been chosen to expire at the arrival
time of ACK/NACK. Determine the average time it will take to transmit the message from source to
destination in each of the following cases,
i)

Assuming that hop-by-hop Stop-and-Wait ARQ protocol is being used. A switch may
begin the transmission of a packet at the second hop as soon as it has been received error
free from the first hop and similarly source begins the transmission of the next packet.

ii)

Assuming that end-to-end Stop-and-Wait ARQ is being used. As soon as the last bit of
a packet arrives at the switch, its transmission over the second link begins. ACK/NACK
are sent by the destination and the source doesnot begin the transmission of the next
packet until the present packet is received error free by the destination.

Note: You have to show the intermediate steps in your calculations.

1000km
Source

1Mbps

1500km
Switch

2Mbps

Destination

Question 4. (15 points) Suppose that we wish to transmit a large message L = 10Mbits over a link
and that the message will be broken into 100Kbits packets. A packet is transmitted simultaneously over
two independent channels as shown in the figure below. If a packet is received error free in at least in
one of the channels, then the transmission of the packet is successful otherwise the packet will require
5
retransmission. Assume that the probability of bit error on each channel is p = 10 . Determine the
average number of bits that it will take to transmit the message from the source to the destination,
i)
ii)

Assuming that Stop-and Wait ARQ is used between source and destination.
Assuming that the original Go-Back N ARQ is used with N= 5 between source and
destination. Compare and explain this result with that of part i) .

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Channel 1
Source

Destination
Channel 2

Question 5. ( 15 points) Assume that the path from a source to a destination station consists of L
links, signal propagation time on each link is p and the transmission rate on each link is same. Assume
that the transmission time of a message on a link is T, ignoring the queueing and retransmission delays,
i)

Derive the end to end message delay from source to destination.

ii)

Derive the end to end delay for transmitting the message assuming that message has
been divided into k packets.

iii)

Derive the expresssion for the end to end delay assuming that message has been divided
into k packets and cut through switching is used.

( Show your derivations and illustrate each mode of message transmission through a
figure)

Question 6. ( 15 points) Determine the spanning tree for the following network, explain your steps.
Costs assigned to each LAN are assumed to be equal.

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Formulas:
-

Poisson distribution:

( t ) k e t
k!
Binomial distribution:

Pr ob ( k arrivals ) =

n
Pr ob ( k successes in n trials) = p k (1 p ) n k
k
Geometric distribution:
Pr ob ( first success occurs on the k ' th trial) = p(1 p) k 1 ,
Expected number of trials for the first success to occur =

E[k ] =

1
p