Year: 1995
Paper: 3
Question Number: 13
Course: LFM Stats And Pure
Section: Conditional Probability
No solution available for this problem.
Difficulty Rating: 1700.0
Difficulty Comparisons: 0
Banger Rating: 1500.0
Banger Comparisons: 0
A message of $10^{k}$ binary digits is sent along a fibre optic cable
with high probabilities $p_{0}$ and $p_{1}$ that the digits 0 and
1, respectively, are received correctly. If the probability of a digit
in the original message being a 1 is $\alpha,$ find the probability
that the entire message is received correctly.
Find the probability $\beta$ that a randomly chosen digit in the
message is received as a 1 and show that $\beta=\alpha$ if, and only
if
\[
\alpha=\frac{q_{0}}{q_{1}+q_{0}},
\]
where $q_{0}=1-p_{0}$ and $q_{1}=1-p_{1}.$ If this condition is
satisfied and the received message consists entirely of zeros, what
is the probability that it is correct?
If now $q_{0}=q_{1}=q$ and $\alpha=\frac{1}{2},$ find the approximate
value of $q$ which will ensure that a message of one million binary
digits has a fifty-fifty chance of being received entirely correctly.
The probability of error $q$ is proportional to the square of the
length of the cable. Initially the length is such that the probability
of a message of one million binary bits, among which 0 and 1 are equally
likely, being received correctly is $\frac{1}{2}.$ What would this
probability become if a booster station were installed at its mid-point,
assuming that the booster station re-transmits the received version
of the message, and assuming that terms of order $q^{2}$ may be ignored?