EC ENGR 132A
Introduction to Communication Systems
Description: (Formerly numbered Electrical Engineering 132A.) Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour; outside study, seven hours. Enforced requisites: courses 102, 113, 131A. Review of basic probability, basics of hypothesis testing, sufficient statistics and waveform communication, signal-design tradeoffs for digital communications, basics of error control coding, intersymbol interference channels and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), basics of wireless communications. Letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
1 of 1
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2021 - The class consists of pre-recorded lectures from previous quarters, with 1 2hr live zoom session per week. The prof. vaguely goes through ppt slides and some tangents, but the onus is you to read the textbook and learn the material by yourself. Though he is nice and knowledgeable, he takes an extremely hands off approach to the class, which leads to alot of frustration and burnout because of the lack of support and management. The HW+Hardware projects+self teaching by reading the book takes quite a bit of time, but he does give extensions. First 2 weeks were review of 102. There is a final project that isn't too complicated. He does give extra credit. It seems his grading isn't too bad. I would not take it with this prof again.
Winter 2021 - The class consists of pre-recorded lectures from previous quarters, with 1 2hr live zoom session per week. The prof. vaguely goes through ppt slides and some tangents, but the onus is you to read the textbook and learn the material by yourself. Though he is nice and knowledgeable, he takes an extremely hands off approach to the class, which leads to alot of frustration and burnout because of the lack of support and management. The HW+Hardware projects+self teaching by reading the book takes quite a bit of time, but he does give extensions. First 2 weeks were review of 102. There is a final project that isn't too complicated. He does give extra credit. It seems his grading isn't too bad. I would not take it with this prof again.
AD
Most Helpful Review
Winter 2016 - Toughest class I've ever taken at UCLA. His exams are also one of the hardest exams I've ever taken. I wish someone told me how hard this class was before I got into it. His curve is super great though, so even though you feel like youre failing, youre actually in like a B- range.
Winter 2016 - Toughest class I've ever taken at UCLA. His exams are also one of the hardest exams I've ever taken. I wish someone told me how hard this class was before I got into it. His curve is super great though, so even though you feel like youre failing, youre actually in like a B- range.
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2021 - Do not take this Professor at any cost. Nobody could follow anything he's doing and when it came to exam time I was extremely under prepared. the HW is not helpful and the lecture notes are a mess, the TA discussion notes are somehow worse. He doesn't post solutions for his exams so you won't have the option to review what you did wrong on the midterm while preparing for the final. I alway fall asleep during his lectures, yes they are that boring and it's all theory. There is an extra credit project that im unsure as to how much its worth but that too doesn't depend on your knowledge from this class but rather your knowledge on Python and machine learning.
Spring 2021 - Do not take this Professor at any cost. Nobody could follow anything he's doing and when it came to exam time I was extremely under prepared. the HW is not helpful and the lecture notes are a mess, the TA discussion notes are somehow worse. He doesn't post solutions for his exams so you won't have the option to review what you did wrong on the midterm while preparing for the final. I alway fall asleep during his lectures, yes they are that boring and it's all theory. There is an extra credit project that im unsure as to how much its worth but that too doesn't depend on your knowledge from this class but rather your knowledge on Python and machine learning.
AD
Most Helpful Review
Very good lecturer, highly recommended for anyone to take. So long as you read the book material before showing up to lecture, and review your notes after lecture, then his homeworks and exams should be straightforward. Also, you should review the practice midterms and practice finals beforehand, as he usually reuses one of the previous exam problems.
Very good lecturer, highly recommended for anyone to take. So long as you read the book material before showing up to lecture, and review your notes after lecture, then his homeworks and exams should be straightforward. Also, you should review the practice midterms and practice finals beforehand, as he usually reuses one of the previous exam problems.
Most Helpful Review
Professor Yao is your average Joe: not too bad, but not great either. His lectures are pretty dry, so it's hard enough staying awake for the full 2 hours, but he does write a lot of equations and derivations on the board. The material during the first half of the course wasn't terribly difficult, but I felt like after the midterm, the material got immensely harder day after day. I couldn't really learn much from his lectures after the second midterm since I was already swamped with work from other classes. Sometimes, I feel like whenever a student asks him a question, he doesn't exactly understand it, so he tries to come up with an answer that doesn't exactly answer the question. His homework assignments weren't difficult to begin with, but they got increasingly harder week after week. He said that if you can do the homework by yourself without looking at a solutions manual, you should be able to do well on his exams. That's not necessarily the case because I felt like the latter homework assignments was essentially copying equations from the textbook. As for the exams, they're not terribly difficult, but they're definitely not easy. I got average on both the midterm and the final, but I felt like I could have scored more had I spent more time on this course. His final exam was kind of unique: the first 90 minutes was closed-book closed-notes while the latter 90 minutes was open-book open-notes. However, the first part of the exam was significantly easier since it focused more on Fourier Transforms, which were primarily covered in the first half of the course.
Professor Yao is your average Joe: not too bad, but not great either. His lectures are pretty dry, so it's hard enough staying awake for the full 2 hours, but he does write a lot of equations and derivations on the board. The material during the first half of the course wasn't terribly difficult, but I felt like after the midterm, the material got immensely harder day after day. I couldn't really learn much from his lectures after the second midterm since I was already swamped with work from other classes. Sometimes, I feel like whenever a student asks him a question, he doesn't exactly understand it, so he tries to come up with an answer that doesn't exactly answer the question. His homework assignments weren't difficult to begin with, but they got increasingly harder week after week. He said that if you can do the homework by yourself without looking at a solutions manual, you should be able to do well on his exams. That's not necessarily the case because I felt like the latter homework assignments was essentially copying equations from the textbook. As for the exams, they're not terribly difficult, but they're definitely not easy. I got average on both the midterm and the final, but I felt like I could have scored more had I spent more time on this course. His final exam was kind of unique: the first 90 minutes was closed-book closed-notes while the latter 90 minutes was open-book open-notes. However, the first part of the exam was significantly easier since it focused more on Fourier Transforms, which were primarily covered in the first half of the course.
1 of 1
