MSc Communications and Signal Processing

For entry in the academic year beginning September 2027, the tuition fees are as follows:

• MSc (full-time)
  UK students (per annum): £17,000
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £40,300

The fees quoted above are fully inclusive of tuition, administration and computational costs.

Fees for entry are subject to yearly review. The University reserves the right to increase your tuition fee by up to 7% each year for courses lasting more than one year, including to reflect rising costs associated with delivering our educational and wider student experience. Postgraduate fees information .

Always contact the admissions team if you are unsure which fee applies to your qualification award and method of attendance.

International student CAS deposit

Self-funded international applicants are required to pay a deposit of £2500 towards their tuition fees before a confirmation of acceptance for studies (CAS) is issued. Some applicants will be required to pay a higher deposit. More information on tuition fee deposits .

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

We offer a number of postgraduate taught scholarships and awards to outstanding UK and international students each year.

The University of Manchester is committed to widening participation in master's study, and allocates £300,000 in funding each year. Our Manchester Master's Bursaries are aimed at widening access to master's courses by removing barriers to postgraduate education for students from underrepresented groups.

We also welcome the best and brightest international students each year and reward excellence with a number of merit-based scholarships. See our range of master’s scholarships for international students .

And, if you have completed an undergraduate degree at The University of Manchester, or are currently in your final year of an undergraduate degree with us, you may be eligible for a discount of 10% on tuition fees if you choose to study on a taught postgraduate course here. Find out if you're eligible and how to apply .

For more information on master's tuition fees and studying costs, visit the University of Manchester funding for master's courses website to help you plan your finances.

Principles of optical propagations in different media: Optical power flow, reflection and refraction, phase and group velocity, polarization of light.

Optical Fibres: different types of fibres, single mode and multi-mode fibres, Ray propagation in fibres, attenuation and signal dispersion in fibres.

Lasers & Photodetectors:   principles of laser oscillations, semiconductor laser diodes and their properties, common types of photodetectors and their principles of operations, photodetector performance characteristics.

Optical Amplifiers:  Basic applications and types of optical amplifiers, semiconductor optical amplifiers, Erbium-doped fibre amplifiers, Raman amplifiers.

Sustainability of Optical communications networks: Data traffic growth of internet, Energy consumption in modulation, transmission, demodulation. Schemes to mitigate energy growth, longer wavelength, temperature stable lasers.

Optical Modulation and Demodulation: Direct and external optical modulators, optical realisation of modulation schemes, direct detection receivers, coherent optical receivers, types of optical noise, high level coherent and differentially coherent optical modulation schemes.

Optical transmission systems design consideration: long-haul and short-reach optical communication systems, impacts of ASE, Noise and sensitivity performance. Error rates, spectral efficiency and performance analysis. Free space optical transmission systems.

Optical Filters and Multiplexing: Common types of optical filters and their principles of operations, Polarization-division multiplexing, wavelength-division multiplexing and optical OFDM.

Passive Optical Networking:   Optical add/drop multiplexing, PONs, EPONs and GPON architectures and standards

Applications of Digital signal processing to the design of high speed optical communication systems: IF estimation and compensation, phase estimation and compensation, polarization-mode equalization, chromatic dispersions equalization.

The course unit aims to:

• Provide a basic understanding of the principles and operation of modern optical communication systems and networks. 
• Appreciate the essence of modern optical fibres transmission techniques for satisfying the demands of high capacity communication systems and networks. 
• Appreciate the role of digital signal processing techniques for compensating transmission impairments in optical communication systems.

On successful completion of the course, a student will be able to:

ILO 1: Compare various optical structures for wavelength division multiplexing and identify their strengths and weaknesses.

ILO 2: Quantify the implications of the exponential growth in internet traffic carried by optical communication systems.

ILO 3: Discriminate various types of optical distortions and noise; Appraise the applications of DSP algorithms for the compensation of their effects.

ILO 4: Design and Analyse different types of optical transmission systems and networks; Discuss specifics of existing and future PON standards.

ILO 5: Explain the basic and advanced theories of optical devices, amplifiers, structures and fibres in modern optical communication systems.

ILO 6: Experimentally analyse system-level performance of an optical fibre transmission systems.

ILO 7: Compare the different types of optical modulations and demodulations and evaluate their performance.

Lectures: 30 hours

Tutorials/problems classes: 6 hours

Laboratories: 6 hours

Feedback on the report is given 14 days after report submission.

• Fiber optic communications: fundamentals and applications by Kumar, Shiva. Wiley, 2014.
• Introduction to fiber-optic communications by Hui, Rongqing.  Academic Press, 2019.
• Digital optical communications by Binh, Le Nguyen. CRC, 2009. 
• Optical fiber communications: principles and practice by Senior, John M. Financial Times/Prentice Hall, 2009. 
• Optical fiber communications by Keiser, Gerd, author. McGraw-Hill, 2014.
• Lightwave technology : telecommunication systems by Agrawal, G. P. (Govind P.). Wiley-Interscience, 2005.
• Essentials of modern optical fiber communication by Noé, Reinhold. Springer, 2016.
• Lightwave communications by paper and Blahut.
• Theory and design of terabit optical fiber transmission systems by Bottacchi, Stefano. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
• The Emerging WDM EPON by Radivojević, Mirjana. Springer International Publishing, 2017. 
• Optical WDM Networks by Mukherjee, Biswanath. Springer US, 2006. 
• Optical WDM networks: from static to elastic networks by Chadha, Devi, author. Wiley-IEEE Press, 2019.
• Advanced Digital Optical Communications, Second Edition by  Binh, Le Nguyen. CRC Press, 2015. 
• Enabling technologies for high spectral-efficiency coherent optical communication networks by Zhou, Xiang, Xie, Chongjin. Wiley, 2016. 
• Digital Processing : Optical Transmission and Coherent Receiving Techniques  by Binh, Le Nguyen. CRC Press, 2013.