A Laboratory Course For Telecommunications Systems Engineering

An integral part of the curriculum in the recently developed Master of Science in Telecommunications Systems program at the University of Oklahoma - Tulsa is a laboratory course. The course is designed to enhance student understanding of fundamental computer networking principles and to expose students to research tools that can be used in carrying out their capstone research projects. Through a series of sequential laboratory modules, students learn to setup and configure simple to complex computer networks and to effectively employ commercial software tools for network design and performance analysis. Near the end of the course, working independently, each student is required to complete a final project that assimilates much of the reinforced and/or newly acquired knowledge and skills. This paper provides a detailed description of the laboratory course and its key project modules.