Explora i corsi di CE

Year 1 - Semester 1


Communication and network systems [Computer network design and control]

  • Network planning and management
  • Routing and QoS-routing
  • Cloud computing and virtualization
  • Software defined networking
  • Network slicing
  • Traffic control algorithms and QoS support
  • Congestion control
  • Data distribution systems

Communication and network systems [Communication systems]

  • Modern Communication Systems and their physical layer
  • Wireless channel models (AWGN, multipath fading, Doppler)
  • Multiplexing (TDM, FDM) and Multiple Access (TDMA, FDMA, CDMA, NOMA)
  • Frame synchronization, Randomizers
  • Introduction to error detection (CRC), error correction (block codes), and ARQ
  • Digital modulations (PSK, QAM, APSK)
  • OFDM modulation and its application
  • Use cases and relative Link Budgets: space links and 5G

Signal, image and video processing and learning [Signal processing: methods and algorithms]

  • Review of discrete-time signals and systems
  • Introduction to non-stationary random processes
  • Estimation theory
  • Spectral estimation
  • Time-frequency analysis
  • The Kalman filter
  • Detection theory

Signal, image and video processing and learning [Image and video processing and learning]

  • Multidimensional filters and transforms
  • Data, image and video compression
  • Convolutional and deep neural networks for image analysis
  • Generative adversarial networks

Machine learning for networking

  • Programming in Python
  • Machine Learning basics theory​
  • Preprocessing, data reduction and data visualization​
  • Supervised and unsupervised learning​
  • Applications and labs applied to Internet measurements and cybersecurity

 Year 1 - Semester 2

Project: Software-defined communication systems

  • Project management and planning
  • Projects in these areas:
    • Optical communications and networking
    • Wireless systems and 5G networks
    • Satellite networks
    • Complex networks
    • Networking for multimedia and music
  • Project design, implementation and validation
  • Periodic project presentations 

Optical fiber communications

  • Optical fiber networks: scenarios of application
  • Introduction to the key optoelectronic components for optical fiber communications
  • Linear and nonlinear propagation effects in single-mode optical fibers
  • Intensity-modulated and direct detection (IM-DD) systems: performance and scalability in short reach scenario for datacenter and Fiber-to-the-Home optical access networks
  • PM-QAM coherent transmission systems: performance and scalability for long haul ultra-high bit rate fiber links
  • Long-haul reconfigurable optical networks (seminar given by external experts)
  • Quantum cryptography (seminar given by external experts)
  • Transoceanic submarine systems (seminar given by external experts)

Information and communication theory

  • Basic concepts from Information Theory
  • Source coding for data compression
  • Channel capacity and capacity formula for the additive Gaussian channel
  • An elementary introduction to block and convolutional codes
  • Channel estimation (Single Carrier and OFDM)
  • Adaptive Equalization ML and MMSE (Single Carrier and OFDM)
  • Iterative channel decoders (LDPC, turbo, polar)
  • Carrier, Timing and Frame Synchronization

Wireless access electromagnetics

  • Introduction to antenna as system components
  • Antenna system parameters
  • Noiseless and noise link budget
  • Low and medium gain antennas for broadcasting, mobile communications, WiFi/WLAN, IoT (slot, patch, dipole)
  • UWB antennas
  • High-gain, reconfigurable and MIMO antennas (arrays) with beamforming
  • Fixed beam, scanning beam MIMO

 Year 2 - Semester 1

Project: Applied communication systems and IoT

  • Project management and planning
  • Projects areas:
    • Open control of optical transport network elements
    • GNSS/GPS-related security
    • Optical sensing
    • Radar-based sensing
    • High-speed optical links for datacenter/HPC applications
    • IoT for smart applications
    • Wireless-based sensing 
  • Communication system design, implementation and validation
  • Periodic project presentations

Network measurement laboratory

  • Configuration of hosts in Local Area Networks, IP addresses management, subnetting/supernetting
  • Traffic monitoring using sniffers in LAN: TCP, UDP and HTTP
  • Performance measurement for file transfers in wired and WiFi networks  
  • Impact of delay and packet losses 
  • Analysis of traffic traces collected from real networks
  • Post-processing tools to extract information out of the raw data
  • Statistical methods and data mining techniques to find correlations and solve classification problems

Signal processing and optical transmission lab

  • Signal Processing laboratory: 
    • DSP implementation of linear filters and their application to lossless audio compression
    • Program templates and input/output interfaces 
    • Basic FIR and IIR filtering structures 
    • Real-time filtering of audio signals
    • Lossless coding based on FIR predictors
    • Real-time lossless coding of audio signals, validation and testing
  • Optical Communications laboratory 
    • Spectral measures of laser sources and their wavelength and power characterizations
    • Experimental procedure for the joint of optical fibers and corresponding measurement of the joint attenuation 
    • Experimental characterization of passive optical devices 
    • Realization of an optical amplifier and corresponding experimental characterization 
    • Spectral characterization of optical sources through optical spectrum analyzers and high resolution methods

Signal processing and wireless transmission lab

  • Signal digital processing laboratory
    • Introduction to digital signals, DSP architecture and programming
    • Introduction to CCS environment for running code on the DSP
    • Entry-level C/C++ coding
    • Implementation of digital FIR and IIR filters
    • Porting from floating point to fixed point precision
    • Live signal processing via double buffering
    • Lossless coding, predictive error coding and Rice encoding
    • Validation and testing
  • Wireless transmissions laboratory
    • Physical layer of broadband fixed and mobile radio-communication standards
    • Structure and main functions of conventional and software defined digital radio transceivers
    • Software defined radio (SDR) platforms Lab
    • Implementation on SDR platform (Ettus B210 and National Instruments USRP-2901) of some common transceiver blocks suitable for most wireless communication standards (WiFi, LTE, DVB)
    • Test and measurements of the performance of some implemented receiver algorithms

Open optical networks

  • State-of-the art transceivers for optical communications
  • Foundations of optical fiber propagation and modeling its impairments
  • Amplifiers and passive components
  • WDM spectral use and standards
  • ROADMs and node structure in general
  • YANG, Netconfig, GMPLS, OTN
  • Emulation of optical layer in photonic networks
  • Routing spectral and wavelength assignment
  • Multilayer orchestration
  • Physical-layer-aware network analysis, design and optimization

5G and next-generation mobile computing

  • 5G and beyond cellular connectivity
  • Network architecture
  • Radio Access Networks
  • Edge computing
  • Mobile service virtualisation
  • Virtual resource allocation
  • Hands-on approach to mobile services
  • Service orchestration

Advanced wireless communications and coding

  • Multiuser uplink channels: orthogonal techniques and multiuser detection
  • Multiple-antenna systems: receiver combining techniques, MIMO channel capacity, antenna arrays, beamforming
  • Multiuser broadcast channels: degraded channel, NOMA, dirty-paper coding, linear precoding optimization
  • Advanced coding and detection techniques for the wireless receiver

Satellite navigation systems

  • Localisation and positioning techniques, radionavigation principles
  • Uncertainty causes and error sources
  • Basics of reference systems and satellite orbits
  • Signal processing for radio-navigation
  • System architecture of GPS and Galileo systems
  • GNSS receivers architectures
  • GNSS applications

Year 2 - Semester 2

Applied information security and cryptography

  • Security concepts: confidentiality, integrity, non-repudiation
  • Security models: types of attack, perfect security, computational security
  • Symmetric-key cryptography: stream ciphers, block ciphers, authenticated encryption
  • Public-key cryptography: key exchange/encapsulation, digital signatures, post-quantum cryptography
  • Key distribution: certificates, public-key infrastructure, quantum key distribution
  • Security applications: authentication, wireless security, transport layer security

Operational research

  • How to build a mathematical optimization model
  • Computational complexity
  • Elements of network flows
  • Local search heuristics
  • Meta-heuristics (tabu search, simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, etc)
  • Applications to optical networks (logical topology design, routing and wavelength assignment)
  • Applications to green networking

Cloud computing and data center design lab

  • Cloud computing e virtualization
  • Data center topologies: leaf-spine, multilayer, Google Jupiter, hybrid optical/electronic switching
  • Routing and traffic engineering in data centers: BGP protocol
  • Architectures for advanced computing: hardware accelerators for Artificial Intelligence (AI)