Recent years have seen a rapid growth of bandwidth intensive voice, video and data applications (high-speed internet, video streaming services and satellite communications). Microwave and optical communication technologies will be pivotal in the delivery of next generation of high-speed networks and thus critical knowledge of these systems is vital to engineers required to deliver these services in the future.  This module aims to develop knowledge and understanding in advanced communications systems, principally modern microwave, optical and broadband technologies.  At the end of this module, students will be able to analyse complex microwave systems using mathematical and computational tools, for example, estimating satellite link budgets.  Further, they will be able to breakdown and categorise different elements of a complete communication system including, for example, high-speed optical data network architectures.  Radio propagation will be studied along with the design principles of advanced microwave systems and inherent sources of degradation, distortion and losses.  Finally, students will be introduced to the latest CAD tools for the evaluation and synthesis of practical microwave systems.