Sample-Based Understanding of Wireless Transceivers and Digital Transmission Via Software-Defined Radio

Alexander M. Wyglinski; Travis Fredrick Collins; Robin Getz

Download Paper | Permalink

Conference: 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Columbus, Ohio
Publication Date: June 24, 2017
Start Date: June 24, 2017
End Date: June 28, 2017
Conference Session: Electrical and Computer Division Technical Session 12
Tagged Division: Electrical and Computer
Page Count: 10
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--28810
Permanent URL: https://strategy.asee.org/28810
Download Count: 2490

Request a correction

Paper Authors

biography

Alexander M. Wyglinski Worcester Polytechnic Institute

visit author page

Alexander M. Wyglinski is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and an Associate Professor of Robotics Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), as well as Director of the Wireless Innovation Laboratory (WI Lab). He received his Ph.D. degree from McGill University in 2005, his M.S. degree from Queens University at Kingston in 2000, and his B.Eng. degree from McGill University in 1999, all in electrical engineering.

visit author page

author page

Travis Fredrick Collins Worcester Polytechnic Institute

biography

Robin Getz Analog Devices orcid.org/0000-0002-2218-1389

visit author page

Robin is currently the Director of Systems Engineering at Analog Devices, and has over twenty years of diverse industry experience in engineering leadership, product marketing and sales with multi-national semiconductor firms, spending his last 15 years at Analog Devices Inc. He has a successful track record of being a highly motivated, strategic thinker, with a passion for technology, and education. Robin currently manages a multi-national, multi-disciplinary team of engineers who deliver high volume board designs, overseeing schematic capture, layouts, initial and volume manufacturing, EMI, ESD and vibration testing for regulatory compliance (CE, FCC), and production test development, and mechanical design for boxing/packaging, for both OEM customers and ADI's education outreach. For the past five years, Robin has been spending a majority of his time working with the combination of ARM, FPGA, and RF transceivers, for SDR applications.

visit author page

Download Paper | Permalink

Abstract

This paper presents an educational paradigm for the teaching of wireless transceiver design and digital transmission techniques from a sample-based perspective using compact form-factor software defined radio (SDR) technology. SDR has been extensively leveraged as an educational resource for the instruction of both undergraduate- and graduate-level digital communication courses for approximately a decade. Given decreasing SDR equipment costs coupled with increasing accessibility to communication system software design tools, SDR technology had been incorporated in numerous electrical and computer engineering curricula around the world. Although most of these SDR-based communication courses view the system from a bit-, frame-, or packet-based perspective and are constrained to laboratory environments, we present an educational framework where the curriculum is sample-based, i.e., the entire communication system is viewed from the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and the digital-to-analog converter (DAC), and the SDR platforms used are sufficiently compact that students can use them anywhere. The curriculum begins with the fundamentals of wireless communication systems engineering and the handling of complex-valued samples produced by and sent to the ADC and DAC, followed by exposure to several practical aspects of wireless transmission and transceiver implementations such as frequency offset, timing correction, and frame synchronization. Once these basic practical design considerations have been addressed, the course continues with the implementation of various modulation (e.g., ASK, PSK, FSK) and coding (e.g., BCH) schemes, with the objective of successfully transmitting ”hello world” and other messages wirelessly over-the-air within a classroom environment. Finally, several advanced topics such as multipath propagation, equalization, and multicarrier modulation are covered. Throughout the course, the students will be working in groups on a comprehensive course design project that synthesizes many of the concepts taught in class. Although this educational paradigm can use any SDR platform capable of handling complex-valued samples (i.e., inphase samples and quadrature samples), the ADALM-PLUTO SDR platform by Analog Devices was used in this course due to its capabilities and compact form factor.

Citation
Format

Wyglinski, A. M., & Collins, T. F., & Getz, R. (2017, June), Sample-Based Understanding of Wireless Transceivers and Digital Transmission Via Software-Defined Radio Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. 10.18260/1-2--28810

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - This paper presents an educational paradigm for the teaching of wireless transceiver design and
digital transmission techniques from a sample-based perspective using compact form-factor
software defined radio (SDR) technology. SDR has been extensively leveraged as an educational
resource for the instruction of both undergraduate- and graduate-level digital communication
courses for approximately a decade. Given decreasing SDR equipment costs coupled with
increasing accessibility to communication system software design tools, SDR technology had
been incorporated in numerous electrical and computer engineering curricula around the world.
Although most of these SDR-based communication courses view the system from a bit-, frame-,
or packet-based perspective and are constrained to laboratory environments, we present an
educational framework where the curriculum is sample-based, i.e., the entire communication
system is viewed from the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and the digital-to-analog converter
(DAC), and the SDR platforms used are sufficiently compact that students can use them
anywhere. The curriculum begins with the fundamentals of wireless communication systems
engineering and the handling of complex-valued samples produced by and sent to the ADC and
DAC, followed by exposure to several practical aspects of wireless transmission and transceiver
implementations such as frequency offset, timing correction, and frame synchronization. Once
these basic practical design considerations have been addressed, the course continues with the
implementation of various modulation (e.g., ASK, PSK, FSK) and coding (e.g., BCH) schemes,
with the objective of successfully transmitting ”hello world” and other messages wirelessly
over-the-air within a classroom environment. Finally, several advanced topics such as multipath
propagation, equalization, and multicarrier modulation are covered. Throughout the course, the
students will be working in groups on a comprehensive course design project that synthesizes
many of the concepts taught in class. Although this educational paradigm can use any SDR
platform capable of handling complex-valued samples (i.e., inphase samples and quadrature
samples), the ADALM-PLUTO SDR platform by Analog Devices was used in this course due to
its capabilities and compact form factor.
AU  - Alexander M. Wyglinski
AU  - Travis Fredrick Collins
AU  - Robin Getz
CY  - Columbus, Ohio
DA  - 2017/06/24
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Sample-Based Understanding of Wireless Transceivers and Digital Transmission Via Software-Defined Radio
UR  - https://strategy.asee.org/28810
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--28810
ER  -