Principles of Digital Communications

By Dr. Shabbir N. Merchant | IIT Bombay

Learners enrolled: 319 | Exam registration: 1

ABOUT THE COURSE:
The course is an introduction to modern digital communications at a senior undergraduate level. The primary goal of the course is to provide the student an understanding of the principles, techniques, trade-offs, and fundamental limits in modern digital communication systems. This course introduces the fundamentals of digital signaling, information theory and coding, digital transmission and reception

INTENDED AUDIENCE: Students from Electrical, Electronics, Electronics and Telecommunications background

PREREQUISITES: Signals and Systems, Basic Probability and Random variables

INDUSTRY SUPPORT: Qualcomm, Samsung, BEL, ISRO, DRDO labs, communication companies

Summary

Course Status :	Upcoming
Course Type :	Core
Language for course content :	English
Duration :	12 weeks
Category :	Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering Communication and Signal Processing
Credit Points :	3
Level :	Undergraduate
Start Date :	21 Jul 2025
End Date :	10 Oct 2025
Enrollment Ends :	28 Jul 2025
Exam Registration Ends :	15 Aug 2025
Exam Date :	01 Nov 2025 IST
NCrF Level	4.5 — 8.0

Note: This exam date is subject to change based on seat availability. You can check final exam date on your hall ticket.

Page Visits

Course layout

Week 1 : Introduction-I, Introduction-II, Information Sources-I, Information Sources-II, Source Coding Theorem-I

Week 2 : Source Coding Theorem-II, Transmission of Information-I, Transmission of Information-II, Channel Coding Theorem-I, Channel Coding Theorem-II

Week 3 : Mutual Information-I, Mutual Information-II, Capacity of a Bandlimited AWGN Channel-I, Capacity of a Bandlimited AWGN Channel-II, Signal Space Representations-I

Week 4 : Signal Space Representations-II, Random Variables, Random Processes, M-ary communication -I, M-ary communication -II

Week 5 : Optimum Receiver-I, Optimum Receiver-II, Optimum Receiver-III, PCM-I, PCM-II

Week 6 : Quantizer Design-I, Quantizer Design-II, Quantizer Design-III, Quantizer Design-IV, Quantizer Design-V

Week 7 : Quantizer Design-VI, Differential Encoding Techniques-I, Differential Encoding Techniques-II, Baseband Digital Communication-I, Baseband Digital Communication-II

Week 8 : Pulse Shaping-I, Pulse Shaping-II, Partial Response Signaling-I, Partial Response Signaling-II, Equalization-I

Week 9 : Equalization-II, Digital Modulation Methods-I, Digital Modulation Methods-II, Digital Modulation Methods-III, Digital Modulation Methods-IV

Week 10 : Digital Modulation Methods-V, Digital Modulation Methods-VI, Digital Modulation Methods-VII, Digital Modulation Methods-VIII, Digital Modulation Methods-IX

Week 11 : Digital Modulation Methods-X, Spread Spectrum Communications-I, Spread Spectrum Communications-II, Spread Spectrum Communications-III, Spread Spectrum Communications-IV

Week 12 : Error Control Coding-I, Error Control Coding-II, Error Control Coding-III, Error Control Coding-IV, Error Control Coding-V

Instructor bio

Dr. Shabbir N. Merchant

IIT Bombay

Dr. Shabbir N. Merchant received his B. Tech, M. Tech, and PhD degrees all from Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), India. He retired as Professor in Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Bombay in June 2019. He has more than 40 years of experience in teaching and research. Dr. Merchant has made significant contributions in the field of signal processing and its applications. His noteworthy contributions have been in solving state of the art signal / image processing and wireless communications problems. His broad area of research interests are wireless communications, wireless sensor networks, signal processing, multimedia communication, and image processing and has published extensively in these areas. He has served on Technical Program Committees of many IEEE premier conferences. He has served on the Editorial Board of two International Journals: International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, and International Journal of Ultra Wideband Communications and Systems. He has been a chief investigator for a number of sponsored and consultancy projects. He has served as a consultant to both private industries and defence organizations. He is on the Academic and Governing Advisory Boards of different engineering colleges in India.

He is a Fellow of IETE. He is a recipient of 10th IETE Prof. S. V. C. Aiya Memorial Award for his contribution in the field of detection and tracking. He is also a recipient of 9th IETE SVC Aiya Memorial Award for ‘Excellence in Telecom Education’. He is a winner of the 2013 VASVIK Award in the category of Electrical & Electronic Sciences & Technology.

Course certificate

The course is free to enroll and learn from. But if you want a certificate, you have to register and write the proctored exam conducted by us in person at any of the designated exam centres.

The exam is optional for a fee of Rs 1000/- (Rupees one thousand only).

Date and Time of Exams: November 01, 2025 Morning session 9am to 12 noon; Afternoon Session 2pm to 5pm.

Registration url: Announcements will be made when the registration form is open for registrations.

The online registration form has to be filled and the certification exam fee needs to be paid. More details will be made available when the exam registration form is published. If there are any changes, it will be mentioned then.

Please check the form for more details on the cities where the exams will be held, the conditions you agree to when you fill the form etc.

CRITERIA TO GET A CERTIFICATE

Average assignment score = 25% of average of best 8 assignments out of the total 12 assignments given in the course.
Exam score = 75% of the proctored certification exam score out of 100

Final score = Average assignment score + Exam score

Please note that assignments encompass all types (including quizzes, programming tasks, and essay submissions) available in the specific week.

YOU WILL BE ELIGIBLE FOR A CERTIFICATE ONLY IF AVERAGE ASSIGNMENT SCORE >=10/25 AND EXAM SCORE >= 30/75. If one of the 2 criteria is not met, you will not get the certificate even if the Final score >= 40/100.

Certificate will have your name, photograph and the score in the final exam with the breakup.It will have the logos of NPTEL and IIT Bombay. It will be e-verifiable at nptel.ac.in/noc.

Only the e-certificate will be made available. Hard copies will not be dispatched.

Once again, thanks for your interest in our online courses and certification. Happy learning.

- NPTEL team

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