New Undergraduate Wireless Lab Offered at UT Austin

WNCG faculty member Prof. Robert W. Heath Jr. introduced a new course this spring semester – the Wireless Communications Laboratory. This course, an undergraduate wireless technical area elective, introduces students to the fundamentals of digital communication in the context of wireless communication. The innovation in the course is the hands-on experience in building a complete wireless link using real RF hardware combined with a LabVIEW software platform. The premise is that it is possible to teach wireless communication at the undergraduate level by using the principles of digital signal processing.

The hardware platform was donated by WNCG Industrial Affiliate, National Instruments to create the Wireless Communications and Mixed Signal Laboratory. It consists of a PXI chassis with a pair of 100MSa/s digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital converters, matched to a flexible RF upconverter and downconverter, and controlled by a PC. The hardware allows real-time transmission and reception, and permits the study of impairments experienced in a real wireless channel including additive noise, multipath interference, and asynchronism.

The course included 3 hours of lecture and 3 hours of lab each week. Four different lab-sections were offered in this first semester of the course. The lectures and the lab were synchronized, with algorithms and concepts being presented by Prof. Heath in class, and the students implementing the same concepts in labs during subsequent weeks. The initial experiments were centered on the implementation of a QAM transceiver with progressively more sophistication including pulse-shaping, matched-filtering, symbol timing, frame synchronization, frequency offset estimation and correction, channel estimation, equalization and detection. In the latter part of the course, the students implemented an OFDM transceiver including symbol synchronization, frequency offset estimation and correction, followed by channel estimation and equalization in the frequency domain. There were some ‘fun’ labs as well, where the students sent and received text messages over a wireless link.

This course offered more than a mere peek at what goes on behind the scenes of practical wireless systems. This course took students a step beyond the usual digital and wireless communications courses and showed them what it takes to go from the textbooks to building actual communication systems. According to TA Roopsha Samanta, “Time and again, I have witnessed students celebrating the successful completion of an experiment, and declaring that they finally understood a certain concept. I believe most of the students found the lab challenging and useful. I am sure they will be displaying the course proudly on their resumes.” Though most of the students were undergraduates, there were a few graduate students in the class, as well. Jeremy Chen, a student member of WNCG who took the class, says, “It is useful and interesting. You get the basic knowledge to build most blocks in a wireless communication system. It gives you confidence that in the real world, you will become a successful communication engineer. In the future, when a company asks you to build an advanced algorithm, having built all the basic building blocks, you are confident of doing a good job.”