A Wireless Communications Systems Laboratory Course (original) (raw)

2010, IEEE Transactions on Education

A novel wireless communications systems laboratory course is introduced. The course teaches students how to design, test, and simulate wireless systems using modern instrumentation and computer-aided design (CAD) software. One of the objectives of the course is to help students understand the theoretical concepts behind wireless communication systems through hands-on experiments and to make them more confident both in system design and analysis. The course also aims at increasing the interest of students in engineering and technology. Therefore, laboratory experiments that are complementary to the materials discussed in the theoretical part of the course are designed specifically to incorporate the use of several wireless devices that students probably use extensively in their daily lives. Complementing and expanding upon the materials covered in other communication courses is another merit of this laboratory-based course. Meeting the course requirements also helps students improve their oral presentation and report preparation abilities. The evaluation of the course indicates that most of the objectives are achieved. This paper discusses the experiments designed to teach various wireless communication concepts to the students on a weekly basis, as well as the interesting projects and the other course requirements, which could be replicated by other universities. Index Terms-Electrical engineering education, hands-on experience, testing and measurement, wireless communications. I. INTRODUCTION W IRELESS technologies and services have evolved significantly, from simple paging to real-time voice communication and recently to very high-rate data communications. Lately, software-defined radio (SDR) [1] and cognitive radio (CR) [2] concepts have gained significant interest among wireless communications communities. With this remarkable development in wireless communication technologies and standards, along with the introduction of new concepts like CR and SDR, a strong desire to develop a flexible laboratory platform to teach a wide variety of wireless techniques has emerged. Laboratory benches that are equipped with highly capable transmitters and receivers can address this goal. The Electrical Engineering Department at the University of South Florida (USF), Tampa, has seen this necessity and developed a laboratory-based course. In this paper, a wireless communications system laboratory that Manuscript

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