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The unprecedented growth in wireless communication is offering opportunities and challenges for educators. Thanks to technology advances and job opportunities, more and more students are interested in wireless communications courses. However, bridging the gap between classroom and real-world experience remains a challenge. Advanced undergraduate co...
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... capacity and reduce power requirements, the overall spectrum allocated for the net- work is divided in small pieces that can be assigned to each cell. This enables the reuse of the spectrum in adja- cent group of cell granted that any carrier frequency is used at farthest cell in the group. The concept of a cellular network is illustrated in Fig. 1. Cellular networks offer higher capacity, reduced power usage, and reduce interference from adjacent users and cells. Most wireless technologies with wide area coverage rely on the cellular concept to serve their users. This is particularly true for ...
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The unprecedented growth in wireless communication is offering opportunities and challenges for educators. Thanks to technology advances and job opportunities, more and more students are interested in wireless communications courses. However, bridging the gap between classroom and real-world experience remains a challenge. Advanced undergraduate co...
Citations
... Utilizing live cellular network to augment the teaching of wireless communications was proposed in [16]. Alqudah proposed utilizing operational WiMAX or GSM networks to collect field measurements of Radio Strength Signal Indicator (RSSI), by recording distance from serving tower and RSSI, students are able to generate graphs of measured path loss for different environments. ...
Project-Based Learning (PBL) can significantly motivate students to learn engineering concepts. This paper reports on the experience at Princess Sumaya University for Technology of utilizing PBL to enhance the teaching of wireless communication course. In the project, students are asked to collect real world measurements of cellular towers signal power. The data is then plotted versus distance for different environments. Students are asked to share their measurements and compare them to expected theoretically predicted values using known path loss models. This paper describes the project and the feedback collected from students.
Laboratory work is an integral part of science and engineering education. Traditionally hardware experiments dominate the electronics engineering laboratory work. Course on Mobile communications has problems due to limited scope of available hardware especially for students' conceptual learning. As a result, the lab work in the Mobile Communications course is carried out using simulation software such as Matlab, Scilab etc. Students are able to verify various concepts studied in theory using these simulations. The problem of using these software simulations is that the students focus shifts from understanding the concepts underlying the experiment to writing the Matlab or Scilab code. We carried out a pilot study to address this problem using the new technology Virtual Laboratories available online. In this paper we present the results of the pilot study carried out with 150 students at UG level and 18 students at PG level in an autonomous college under university of Mumbai using Mobile Communications Virtual laboratory. The results indicate an increase in the students' understanding of core concepts such as frequency reuse, channel fading and various handoff strategies. The students' have given a positive feedback in the course exit survey regarding their experience with the new lab format. They find working with these labs more interesting and motivating. The performance of students in the test at the end of semester has improved in questions related to the core concepts.
