45,563 research outputs found
Laboratory Experiments on 5G Cellular Technologies - A Case Study on the Synergy of Research and Experiential Learning
Teaching and research complement each other. This is
an advice often given to young professors, to encourage
them to find synergy between research and teaching, i.e., to
let research aid teaching, and vice-versa. When a professor
develops new laboratory experiments for undergraduate
courses in wireless communications, he/she may find it
difficult to replicate research experiments, because they
require expensive equipment, usually available in
“research, non-teaching” laboratories. In this paper, we
present a wireless laboratory that is used for both research
and teaching. We show how the research on fifth
generation (5G) cellular networks - including millimeter
wave transmission, ultra-wideband wireless
communications, and multiple-input-single-output (MISO)
antennas – helped develop laboratory experiments for
undergraduate engineering students. The experiments not
only teach students about 5G technologies, but also how to
use real-time spectrum analyzers, vector signal generators,
arbitrary waveform generators, and signal analyzers, which
will help their engineering and/or research careers.Cockrell School of Engineerin
Teaching telecommunication standards: bridging the gap between theory and practice
©2017 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Telecommunication standards have become a reliable mechanism to strengthen collaboration between industry and research institutions to accelerate the evolution of communications systems. Standards are needed to enable cooperation while promoting competition. Within the framework of a standard, the companies involved in the standardization process contribute and agree on appropriate technical specifications to ensure diversity and compatibility, and facilitate worldwide commercial deployment and evolution. Those parts of the system that can create competitive advantages are intentionally left open in the specifications. Such specifications are extensive, complex, and minimalistic. This makes telecommunication standards education a difficult endeavor, but it is much demanded by industry and governments to spur economic growth. This article describes a methodology for teaching wireless communications standards. We define our methodology around six learning stages that assimilate the standardization process and identify key learning objectives for each. Enabled by software-defined radio technology, we describe a practical learning environment that facilitates developing many of the needed technical and soft skills without the inherent difficulty and cost associated with radio frequency components and regulation. Using only open source software and commercial of-the-shelf computers, this environment is portable and can easily be recreated at other educational institutions and adapted to their educational needs and constraints. We discuss our and our students' experiences when employing the proposed methodology to 4G LTE standard education at Barcelona Tech.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
A Software Radio Challenge Accelerating Education and Innovation in Wireless Communications
This Innovative Practice Full Paper presents our methodology and tools for
introducing competition in the electrical engineering curriculum to accelerate
education and innovation in wireless communications. Software radio or
software-defined radio (SDR) enables wireless technology, systems and standards
education where the student acts as the radio developer or engineer. This is
still a huge endeavor because of the complexity of current wireless systems and
the diverse student backgrounds. We suggest creating a competition among
student teams to potentiate creativity while leveraging the SDR development
methodology and open-source tools to facilitate cooperation. The proposed
student challenge follows the European UEFA Champions League format, which
includes a qualification phase followed by the elimination round or playoffs.
The students are tasked to build an SDR transmitter and receiver following the
guidelines of the long-term evolution standard. The metric is system
performance. After completing this course, the students will be able to (1)
analyze alternative radio design options and argue about their benefits and
drawbacks and (2) contribute to the evolution of wireless standards. We discuss
our experiences and lessons learned with particular focus on the suitability of
the proposed teaching and evaluation methodology and conclude that competition
in the electrical engineering classroom can spur innovation.Comment: Frontiers in Education 2018 (FIE 2018
Laboratory measurement campaign of DVB-T signal with transmit delay diversity
The requirements for future DVB-T/H networks demand that broadcasters design and deploy networks that provide ubiquitous reception in challenging indoors and other obstructed situations. It is essential that such networks are designed cost-effectively and with minimized environmental impact. The EC funded project PLUTO has since its start in 2006 explored the use of diversity to improve coverage in these difficult situations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the performance of Transmit Delay Diversity (DD) with two antennas to improve the reception of DVB-T/H systems operating in different realistic propagation conditions through a series of tests using a SPIRENT SR5500 dual channel emulator. The relationship between correlation coefficient between channels, receiver velocity and diversity gain is nvestigated. It is shown that transmit delay diversity significantly improves the quality of reception particularly in simulated fast fading mobile broadcasting applications. This paper documents research conducted by Brunel University and Broadreach Systems
Investigation of turbulence effect on the free space optical link for ground-to-train communications
There is a growing demand for high mobility and ultrafast internet/data services which drives the motivation for free space optical (FSO) communications for high speed trains. Here we present an FSO link for the ground-to-train communications, which consists of optical transceivers positioned alongside the track and on the roof of the train. When the train moves at a high speed, the airwave induced turbulence degrades the FSO link performance. In this paper the effect of turbulence is experimentally investigated and compared with the case of no turbulence
Experimental study of bit error rate of free space optics communications in laboratory controlled turbulence
This paper reports experimental results for the performance of an free space optical (FSO) communication link employing different modulation schemes under the influence of the atmospheric scintillation. A dedicated experimental atmospheric simulation chamber has been developed where weak and medium turbulence can be generated and its effect on the FSO link is investigated. The experimental data obtained is compared to the theoretical prediction. The paper also shows that the effect on the data transmission performance depends on the position of turbulence source positioned within the chamber
All optical fog-sensor for determining the fog visibility range in optical wireless communication links
The goal of this research work is to use an all optical based fog sensor to study the atmospheric visibility of fog and its constituents on the optical wireless communication (OWC) links in a controlled laboratory test-bid. The fog sensor measures the transmittance of the Infrared (IR) radiations which is used to determine the link visibility. Experimental results obtained show that using the fog sensor the visibility range from 0.37 – 1 km and above with respect to different fog density can be predicted
- …