ARAB OPEN UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF COMPUTER STUDIES

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND COMPUTING
T209: INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES

Fall 2005/2006

MIDTERM FORM B KEY

IMPORTANT:
1) This exam has 3 parts with a total of 75 questions (5 in Part 1, 10 in Part 2 and 60 in
Part 3).
2) Part 1 questions carry a WEIGHT OF 8 marks each.
3) Part 2 questions carry a WEIGHT OF 3 marks each.
4) Part 3 questions carry a WEIGHT OF 0.5 marks each.
5) The exam paper consists of 13 pages including this page.
6) Exam duration is 180 minutes.
7) Write your student ID, name, group number, and tutor name on this page as well as on
the last page of this exam.

:‫معلومات هامة‬
10 ‫ الجزء الثاني مكون من‬،‫ أسئلة‬5 ‫ الجزء األول يتكون من‬.‫ سؤاال‬75 ‫ بمجموع‬،‫) هذا االمتحان مكون من ثالثة أجزاء‬1
.‫ سؤاال‬60 ‫ الجزء الثالث مكون من‬،‫أسئلة‬
.‫) كل سؤال في الجزء األول له نصف عالمة‬2
.‫) كل سؤال في الجزء الثاني له ثالثة عالمات‬3
.‫) كل سؤال في الجزء الثالث له ثمانية عالمات‬4
.‫) صفحة من ضمنها هذه الصفحة‬13( ‫) عدد صفحات هذا االمتحان‬5
. ‫) دقيقة‬180( ‫) مدة االمتحان‬6
.‫ واسم المشرف األكاديمي‬،‫ ورقم شعبتك‬،‫ واسمك‬،‫) أكتب رقمك الجامعي‬7

Student ID: Student Name:

Group Number: Tutor Name:

Page 1 of 13 (B)
PART 1: Answer the following questions in the space given below each question.
1) Consider the following diagram for the Web communication system with a mobile
recipient. Use this diagram as your starting point to

a) draw diagram indicating what passes between the components for the Web communication
system with a mobile recipient.

A Web communication system, indicating what passes between the components

4 points

b) draw diagram indicating the tasks performed by the components for the Web
communication system with a mobile recipient.

A Web communication system, indicating the tasks performed by the components

4 points

Page 2 of 13 (B)
2) Draw a flowchart for the following case: A customer wants to build a voice
recognition interface for a sandwich distribution machine. The interface should provide the
following tasks:
 Welcome the user,
 Ask the user to choose one of the following sandwiches “Halloum, Turkey, Chicken”,
 Confirm the order,
 Manage any reasonably predictable errors made by the user,
 Provide a polite message if the user chooses to quit.

Answer: Use the scale Excellent (8) for no mistakes, Very Good (6 to 7) one mistake, Good (4
to 5) two mistakes, poor (0 to 3) three mistakes or more.

Start

TtS prompt « Welcome to the

» sandwich distributor

Present list of Sandwich Options to

User

TtS prompt « Please select a type

» from the displayed list

Wait for and

recognize the
spoken product
option

Service
? Recognized

Confirm Unrecognized
Confirm Confirm
Chicken option
Halloum Turkey Or QUIT
Chosen

TtS prompt « Thank you for

» .calling

End

Page 3 of 13 (B)
Page 4 of 13 (B)
3) One of the simplest forms of compression of digital data is run-length coding. This
involves detecting sequences (runs) of 0s or 1s, and replacing each sequence with a number
signifying how many times that digit is repeated in the sequence. Given the 100-bit message
001111...1111, where the dots stand for continuous 1s.
a) What is the compressed version of this message

(00000010)0(01100010)

4 points

b) What is the compression ratio in this case.

This compression ratio (i.e. number of bits in the original message divided by the
number in the compressed message) of 100/18, which is between 5 and 6.

2 points

c) Is this a lossless compression or a lossy compression

lossless compression

2 points

Page 5 of 13 (B)
4) Networking standards define the protocols required to achieve interworking. These
protocols exist at different layers. Each layer defines a set of functions to service the layers
above. At each layer, protocols define the functions of that layer. The idea of layered
architecture has been formalized in the Reference Model of Open Systems Interconnection
(OSI). The OSI model has seven layers, mention 4 of them along with brief description of their
functions.

2 points for each layer

Layer 1: physical layer. Concerned with the transmission of bits, dealing with the
necessary interfacing, providing mechanical, electrical and functional characteristics
to access the physical medium.

Layer 2: data-link layer. Provides reliable means of transmission of the data across
the physical link between two network elements. It deals with any errors that may
have occurred during the transmission and acknowledges the receipt of the data.

Layer 3: network layer. Establishes, maintains and terminates the communication of

the data between one network computer and another.

Layer 4: transport layer. Provides network-independent end-to-end control of the

communication session once the path has been established. Basically, this layer acts
as the liaison between the user and the network.

Layer 5: session layer. Responsible for establishing, maintaining and breaking

sessions in an orderly manner. The protocol manages the complete dialogue between
the user applications.

Layer 6: presentation layer. Concerned with the interpretation of the data between
the two corresponding application layer protocols so that the structure of the data is
preserved.

Layer 7: application layer. Provides support to the user applications such as file
transfer, remote file access, print access and e-mail relay. It also manages
communication between applications.

Page 6 of 13 (B)
5) Network topology is a term used to identify the way computer are interconnect in a
point-to-point network. How many links are needed to connect 9 computers in each of the
following network topologies? For each case draw the resulting network topology.

a) Star network: One computer is at the center and the rest are linked to it.

8 links

3 points equally divided between the picture and the number

b) Ring network: Computers are connected in a circular shape.

8 links

3 points equally divided between the picture and the number

c) Mesh network: Computers are connected using a two-dimensional grid where each
computer is connected to 4 others (up, down, left and right).

18 links

2 points equally divided between the picture and the number

Page 7 of 13 (B)
PART 2: Answer the following questions in the space given below each question.
User the scale: Excellent (3) no mistakes, Good(2) one or two mistakes, and Poor (0 to 1)
many mistakes.

1) List the stages of the STAIR strategy with brief description of each stage.

Statement – prepare a clear statement of the requirements.

Tools – review your tools and select the most appropriate for the task.
Actions – deciding the what, when and how.
Implementation – executing the action plan.
Review – verifying that your solution fulfils the requirements.

2) What are the main problem-conditions for the use of speech-based technology in the HTC
context?

The main conditions that yield problems in automatic speech recognition are: speech
style different from the training data used to develop the recognizer (spontaneous
speech and accented speakers) and extraneous noise (speech within a natural field
environment).

3) In each country there are several companies all offering a mobile telephone system in the same
physical region. Each of these companies uses radio signals to connect its subscribers’ mobile
phones to its base stations. Explain how do the these companies distinguish between the calls
being made by their users and those being made by other users?

The radio spectrum available for GSM telephony has been divided up into various
bands, and each company has been allocated just some of these bands. Thus the
companies distinguish between their subscribers and those of other companies by
using different sets of frequencies for the calls.

4) Given a propagation velocity of 1.77×108 m/s (meter per second) and a delay of 3.5 µs
introduced by each repeater, what is the round trip delay for two computers at either end of a
2500 m link that includes three repeaters?

The time to travel between the two computers is equal to the sum of the time required
to travel along the cable and the delay introduced by the three repeaters. This is
given by:

The round trip delay is twice this value: 49.2 µs or approximately 50 µs.

5) Discuss the significant difference between GSM and UMTS.

One significant difference is that UMTS has been designed to carry all sorts of data,
including speech, on an equal basis, whereas GSM was designed principally for
speech and only secondarily for data. Another significant difference is that it will be
possible to ask for a particular quality of service with UMTS, something that is not
possible with GSM and other 2G systems.

Page 8 of 13 (B)
6) The figure below shows a bridge connecting three collision domains, using ports A, B and C.
Construct a forwarding table, after the bridge has received the following frames:

[to 02 : from 01], [to 07 : from 02], [to 05 : from 08], [to 03 : from 02].

The bridge constructs the following forwarding table. It does this by recording
the source address against the port number for any packet it receives.

Destination, port
01, A
02, A
08, B

7) Summarize in a few sentences your understanding of usability, including a brief explanation of

its importance in HTC.

Usability is a concept that tentatively embraces all the aspects of the relationship
between user and system, which are relevant not only to the success of a finished
system or product but also to its development. Usability tests are carried out at
various stage of human interface design, providing clues to designers on successful
and problematic aspects of the interface. Usability measurements can also provide
valuable marketing information.

8) When converting from analogue to digital, what is the minimum sampling rate required for a
signal with a bandwidth covering frequencies up to 5 kHz?

The sampling rule states that the minimum sampling rate must equal twice the
bandwidth of the signal. If the bandwidth of the signal is 5 kHz, then the sampling
rate must not be less than 10 kHz.

9) Why does separating the attempts to transmit by at least one slot time ensure they do not
collide?

The slot time is chosen to allow a frame to propagate across the extremes of a collision
domain and back again; called the round trip delay. Therefore, if one computer waits
for one slot time before beginning to transmit, it is certain to detect if another
computer had started to transmit one slot time earlier.

Page 9 of 13 (B)
10) List two key aspects of the UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System).

the ability to handle voice and all types of data effectively, including video and audio
(in a sense, voice becomes just another type of ‘data’);

the separation of service provision from the networks themselves;

the ability to use these terminals worldwide (using mobiles in other countries is known
as roaming);

high-speed data transfer: 144 kilobits per second (kbits s-1 or kbits/s) for moving
vehicles, 384 kbits s-1 for pedestrians and 2 megabits per second (Mbits s-1 or
Mbits/s) for stationary users.

small, low-cost pocket terminals;

a single system for all environments: residential, office, cellular and even satellite.

Page 10 of 13 (B)
PART 3: Answer the following True/False statements (fill your answers in the table at the end):
1. *any could be used in the RAD application to redirect the unrecognized words. [T]
2. A backoff algorithm is used to reduce the collision. [T]
3. A channel of bandwidth 60 MHz can carry no more than 7 frequency-division multiplexed
signals if each signal has a bandwidth of 8 MHz. [T]
4. A channel which can support a bit rate of 1 megabit per second will be adequate to carry five
digital signals which are to be time-division multiplexed, given that each signal has a bit rate of
300 kilobits per second. [F]
5. A collision domain is a communication channel which may only inter-connect network
elements using a star topology arrangement. [F]
6. A connectionless service requires the user to set up a connection before sending any data. [F]
7. A digital transmitter transmits a voice signal in a speed = 80kbps; each sample of the signal is
coded (represented) in 8 bits. Knowing that, the sampling rate is 64k samples/seconds. [T]
8. A set of instructions put together to tell a computer how to carry out a task, it is called
hardware. [F]
9. Address resolution protocol, ARP, is used to discover TCP addresses. [F]
10. All digital signals are binary signals but the inverse is not true. [F]
11. Among the advantages of multimodal interfacing are: it allows users to choose freely the most
appropriate input mode for a given situation, language processing can be minimized as users
tend to use simpler and briefer language, and it allows error correction triggered by the user
with the choice of an alternative input mode. [T]
12. An analogue signal whose frequency components extend from a cut-off frequency of 10 kHz to
a cut-off frequency of 60 kHz is said to have a bandwidth of 50 kHz. [T]
13. An Ethernet LAN can have only one collision domain. [T]
14. An example of a valid IPv4 address could be 43.9.7 [F]
15. An odd-parity code for the word 0011 is 00111. [T]
16. ANSI, IEEE, IETF, ISO, and ITU are few examples on organizations which are responsible for
developing standards. [T]
17. Availability, throughput, latency, and packet loss are important metrics for the Quality of
Service. [T]
18. Bridges divide the local area networks into separate collision domains. [T]
19. Carrier sense means to transmit if your system is connected. [F]
20. CRC is an algorithm that corrects errors. [F]
21. CSLU Toolkit RAD stands for Remote Application Designer. [F]
22. de facto standards emerge from common usage and which often originate with a single
manufacturer who encourages others to use them. [T]
23. Frequency Hopping can be used to combat fading problem. [T]
24. Frequency reuse means dividing the frequency into several frequencies to cover a wide area.
[F]

Page 11 of 13 (B)
25. Human–computer interaction (HTI) is a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and
implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of the major
phenomena surrounding them. [T]
26. If a message consisting of 2000 bytes is compressed to occupy 125 bytes then the compression
ratio is 4. [F]
27. If exactly 20 seconds of speech are to be sampled at a rate of 44100 samples per second and 16
bits are to be used to hold each sample then 110250 bytes of memory will be needed to hold the
digitized speech. [F]
28. If we use 6 bits to code words in the computer, then the maximum number of distinct codes we
can use is 64. [T]
29. In CDMA, several messages can be sent simultaneously in a single cell provided that they
occupy different frequency bands. [F]
30. In cell handover, the mobile phone will keep using the same frequency so that it does not lose
the signal. [F]
31. In cellular telephone systems, the frequencies used in one cell must be different from those used
in any adjacent cell. [F]
32. In GSM mobile phone systems the process of registration occurs only as a user crosses into an
area covered by a new MSC. [T]
33. In OSI layered architecture terms IP is a transport layer protocol. [F]
34. In OSI layered architecture terms the TCP layer is situated below the IP layer. [F]
35. In packet switched networks all the packets follow the same route between the sender and the
destination. [F]
36. In the Code Division, Multiple Access (CDMA) used in the 3G, both the frequency and the
time is shared by stations. [T]
37. In the local loop of the PSTN network, the subscriber’s link always carries digital signal. [F]
38. In Time Division Multiple Access, the frequency is divided into several frequency slots. [F]
39. Information is the coded representation of data. [F]
40. Knowledge is much like information which can be passed around or stored as data in a
database. [F]
41. Multimodal architectures provide ways to communicate using more than one sense at a time.
[T]
42. Only half the network elements in a collision domain can transmit at the same time. [F]
43. Propagation delay is the time spent after the packet is sent up to the moment it was received.
[F]
44. TCP is an error-free transportation between source and destination application layers. [F]
45. The 8-bit binary equivalent of denary 33 is 00111010. [F]
46. The address 2.a.1 is a correct IP address. [F]
47. The bandwidth of an analogue signal is the difference between the highest and lowest
frequencies present in the signal. [T]
48. The denary equivalent of the hexadecimal IP address AA.09.45.FE is 170.9.69.254? [T]
49. The essential three parts of any communication system are a mobile phone, a base station and a
receiver. [F]

Page 12 of 13 (B)
50. The increase in traffic should significantly affect the load in a managed network. [F]
51. The main difference between Speaker Independent Systems and Speaker Enrollment Systems is
that the first one is trained with more vocabulary than the second one. [F]
52. The maximum round trip delay for an Ethernet frame can be calculated from the minimum
frame length and the bit rate. [T]
53. The mobile telephone system is a one-to-one, one-way, and synchronous communication
system where the sender and recipient are people. [F]
54. The more Linguistics we use, the easier is the process of speech recognition. [T]
55. The RAD Action object is equivalent to the process symbol in the flowchart. [T]
56. The RAD Subdialogue object behaves much like a subroutine in traditional programming
languages. The equivalent flowchart symbol is the subroutine symbol. [T]
57. The Repair Default subroutine should be called in order to handle the speech recognition errors
in RAD applications. [F]
58. Top-Down design is finalized at a level where all the actions are independent of each others
vertically. [F]
59. Transferring 200 Kbyte over a link with a bandwidth of 10 Mbit/s takes 163.84 ms. [T]
60. WAP is the de facto standard for providing internet services to mobile phones and other types
of wireless devices. [T]

Q# Answer Q# Answer Q# Answer

1 T 21 F 41 T
2 T 22 T 42 F
3 T 23 T 43 F
4 F 24 F 44 F
5 F 25 T 45 F
6 F 26 F 46 F
7 T 27 F 47 T
8 F 28 T 48 T
9 F 29 F 49 F
10 F 30 F 50 F
11 T 31 F 51 F
12 T 32 T 52 T
13 T 33 F 53 F
14 F 34 F 54 T
15 T 35 F 55 T
16 T 36 T 56 T
17 T 37 F 57 F
18 T 38 F 58 F
19 F 39 F 59 T
20 F 40 F 60 T

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