Lab Plan

Wireless Communications Laboratory and Course

By Dr. Cheng Sun

The wireless revolution is upon us and it is critical that Electrical Engineering students gain both practical and theoretical experience in such fields as RF (radio frequency) and satellite communications, embedded systems, wireless modems, remote sensing, and GPS (global positioning systems).  Given the budgetary and unit constraints of our curriculum, students have found that the only way to obtain this needed experience has been through on-site projects with the rapidly evolving wireless industry.  This has, more often than not, meant COOP assignments and summer jobs and has had the negative side effect of delaying graduation (both directly, through the lost time spent off-campus, and, indirectly, as students often return “out-of-sequence” and need extra time to catch up.).  

The wireless communication field has experienced a rapid growth in the last five years. Wireless communication systems encompass many devices and technologies including cordless phones, paging and PCS (personal communication services). The Global Wireless Education Consortium (GWEC) was formed in March, 1997 to address a serious problem:  the shortage of qualified wireless engineers. Recognizing the significance of the wireless market, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is also in the process of developing a curriculum to meet this demand. Cal Poly was accepted as a member of GWEC in November 1997 because of its excellent reputation as an undergraduate engineering school.  Other members of GWEC include such companies as Motorola, Lucent Technologies, Ericsson, AT&T Wireless Services, AirTouch Communications, and Qualcomm; about a dozen universities are members as well.

Our present curriculum in the EE Department offers many individual courses which are related to the wireless area and contain key components of the theory and technology of wireless systems. These include

Most of these courses are technical electives and not very many students can take this complete set of courses.  As a result, students seeking a wireless career still have some major deficiencies in their education. Therefore, we are developing an integrated wireless lecture course which will cover aspects of all the above mentioned topics (in a more condensed fashion), and will be tailored to the specific need of wireless applications. In addition, we also plan to include a topic on system discussions as it is utterly important to have a thorough understanding of overall system issues in contemporary communications.

To complement the lecture course, we are developing a laboratory course in the wireless area. The laboratory will begin with cordless telephone system experiments , and will then be followed by experiments on system components such as antennas, low noise amplifiers, power amplifiers, frequency synthesizers, phase locked loops, digital signal processors, and computer baseband interfaces. For this laboratory course, we need to work with GWEC members to acquire the free or low-cost software and equipment necessary for performing the experiments.

With the proposed lecture and laboratory courses, we believe that Cal Poly will be one of the leading  universities in the country for providing a sound practical training in the wireless area. Cal Poly will also be in a strong position to respond to the forthcoming RFP initiative from the National Science Foundation. As the program matures, we will be ready to offer wireless workshops for industry engineers and workers from other universities.  This will not only serve to provide critical technical enrichment of our programs, but should serve as a source of supplemental funding as well.

 

 

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