Hands-on undergraduate course based on software-defined radio and Matlab/Simulink

Abstract

Recent breakthroughs lowering the costs of software-defined radio devices have made them very attractive for teaching wireless communication. This paper provides an example of an undergraduate course that incorporates the use of low-cost software-defined radio and Matlab/Simulink software to illustrate the basic principles of practical digital communication systems. This course targets senior level undergraduate electrical engineering students with a background in the fields of communication and signal processing. The course comprises two parts: software-defined radio introductory studies and implementation of a basic digital modem. The second part of this course may also be taught as project-based learning or in a hackathon-style event. Finally, a list of additional project-based learning/hackathon projects is provided.

Teaching wireless channel modeling with software‐defined radio

“…The straightforward applicability of commercially available low‐cost software‐defined radio (SDR) equipment opens new horizons in the teaching of wireless communication and seems to be a natural approach in the field [23,3,2,32]. However, the design and implementation of a digital receiver requires a significant level of communication theory and SDR implementation proficiency [1,13,3,7]. Moreover, such implementation has to be delayed until the students have gained sufficient knowledge in communication theory, for example, orthogonal frequency‐division modulation (OFDM) [18].…”