Objective
This course provides students with the knowledge about wireless communication systems. The course content includes antenna fundamentals, antenna arrays applications such as mobile phone handsets and base-station trunk antennas, radiowave propagation basics, UHF and microwave line-of-sight-links, propagation over suburbs and urban areas, propagation into and inside buildings, MIMO antenna systems, smart antennas, phased arrays. The course also introduces multi-path fading models, modulation techniques, multiple access techniques and OFDM.
Syllabus
Wireless communication systems,
EM theory and radiowave basics, Antenna fundamentals.
Antenna arrays applications: mobile phone handsets, base-station trunk antennas.
Propagation basics,
UHF and microwave line-of-sight-links.
Propagation over suburbs, urban areas, into and inside buildings.
Multi-path fading models, Ray model,
Propagation techniques, MIMO, smart antennas and phased arrays, OFDM
Learning Outcome
For upper level students: Students should understand the basic principles and concepts of radio wave propagation and fundamentals of antenna designs, and use them to solve practical problems; understand how to mathematically describe the propagation models for particular wireless communication environment and know how to extract a propagation model through experiment. With a known propagation model, the students are able to design system level requirement of a communication system. The students should competently conduct a system level simulation of a communication system by incorporating an appropriate channel model between transmitter and receiver, designing a data formatting, modulation and demodulation functional blocks and required RF functional blocks. Through studying the bit error rate (BER) performance of the system, student can investigate how the channel fading affects the performance of a system, and optionally, can design a high level diversity system in the simulation model.
For basic level students: Students should understand the basic principles and concepts of radio wave propagation and fundamentals of antenna designs; understand how to use the propagation models in a particular wireless communication environment. With a known propagation model, the students are able to design system level requirement of a communication system. The students should able to conduct a system level simulation of a communication system with assistance of a tutor. Through studying the bit error rate (BER) performance of the system, student should be able to investigate how the channel fading affects the performance of a system.
Laboratory
The laboratory work includes experiments and CAD practice. A complete wireless transceiver need to be built in Advanced Design System (ADS), the most sophisticated wireless system CAD software package.