Open book, open notes, and open laptop exam. Because each midterm is an open book, open notes and open laptop exam, you'll likely need to move quickly through the exam at times, and at other times, you'll need to think critically about how to solve a problem. To this end, having regular sleep, eating, and exercise will be very helpful. In other words, cramming for the exam the night before will likely leave you a bit tired and groggy during the exam. You'll want to have a rested mind for the exam.
Zip archive of the Canvas course site. On Sunday, I'll provide a zip archive of the course Canvas site (1 GB). Please download and extract the archive on your laptop. That will allow you to search the course content on your laptop during the exam because access to the Internet will not be allowed during the exam.
Studying for the midterm exam. One approach is to work through the homework and mini-project #1 assignments, and then take the blank version of midterm #1 from the last time I had taught ECE 313 in Fall 2021. Use the solution set to help diagnose where you need to reinforcement your knowledge. The solution set has pointers to slides and book sections for more information about that particular problem. In addition, the online companion site for the Signal Processing First textbook has hundreds of worked problems. Chapters 2-4 of DSP First cover identical material as chapters 2-4 of Signal Processing First. You can access the homework problems and their solutions via the Homework menu at the top of the Web page, or by using the Homework link in the supplemental material for each chapter. Once you've reinforced your knowledge, take the midterm #1 exam from fall 2018 and possibly fall 2017. I redesigned my approach to this course for the fall 2017 offering.
Classroom for the midterm exam. The exam will be in UTC 1.102 and UTC 1.130. Please leave one empty seat or an aisle on your left and right. The space will help you be more comfortable to arrange your books, notes, and laptop for the midterm exam.
You will also be responsible for the material in
There will likely be five questions on Midterm #1. There will be no questions about Matlab commands or syntax on the midterm. That said, you are welcome to use Matlab as a way to check certain answers.
Here are the questions from the previous exams that are related to the material to be covered on midterm #1 this semester:
Problem 2: You can solve this problem with using only one addition (1+1) and one multiplication (1 times 1).
(a) Ideas used in finding the answer without doing any calculations:
(b) Ideas used to find the answer without any calculations:
Problem 3: This problem involves very little math. It is meant to test concepts. (As a side note: if the description of a system response involves a summation, it does not necessarily mean that the system is a discrete-time system. Conversely, if a description of a system response involves an integral, it does not necessarily mean that the system is a continuous-time system.)
(a) Finite impulse response
(b) The impulse response is the system response when an impulse is input. Since the system is continuous time, use a Dirac delta functional d(t) for the impulse: x(t) = d(t). So, in the summation for y(t), replace x with d.
(c) The step response is the system response when a step function is input. So, in the summation for y(t), replace x with u.
(d) For N = 3, the step response is
(e) (N - 1) T
Problem 4: The solution to part (b) gets to very tedious. In the future, I would try to not assign a problem this tedious on a midterm.
(a) The characteristic equation is 1 - 3/2 D-1 + K D-2 = 0. So, there are two roots:
(b) The roots need to be inside the unit circle. So, | r0 | < 1 and | r1 | < 1. Solve for K. This is the tedious part. The answer is something like 1/2 < K < 1.
It means that if there are non-zero initial conditions, the system will output a weighted combination of its characteristic modes. That output would be sustained for all time from time 0 to time infinity.
Question 2: I get confused about what types of systems can be used for what types of filters, and i can't really find a specific section in the book about it, can you direct me toward where I might find a better understanding of what systems make what filters and what applications they can have?
This notion will be more clear after we learn more about frequency responses (Laplace and Fourier transforms) in the second part of the course.
As far as midterm #1, we have seen two examples of a lowpass filter (integrator in continuous-time and an averager in discrete-time) and a highpass filter (differentiator in continuous-time and a first-order difference in discrete-time). We have also seen one example of an all-pass filter (homework problem 3.3).
The Mandrill (Baboon) demonstration uses a cascade of a lowpass and a highpass filter, and the cascade has a bandpass response.
I have not presented any examples of bandstop filters yet.
Question 3: Finally, in my differential equations class, we didn't really use the ej t for complex roots, we just made it as sin t + cos t. I'm used to solving it this way, so the book method of using ej t or cos(t + theta) is kind of confusing. Should I use my time to learn this method or would the other way be ok on the test?
In terms of solving a differential equation, what matters is getting the right answer with a mathematically correct method.
In terms of understanding the behavior of systems governed by differential equations, it is important to know how the roots of the characteristic polynomial are mapped into characteristic modes. This is where the elambda t and tk elambda t forms arise.
