Software Defined Radio Laboratory Platform for Enhancing Undergraduate Communication and Networking Curricula

The advances of communication and networking have changed the world fundamentally. Communication and networking courses, especially wireless communication and networking courses, have become an integral part of the Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, and Computer Engineering curricula. However, most of these courses are taught at many institutions without a laboratory. For those courses associated with labs, often special hardware based experiment systems are used. These experiment systems are expensive so most schools cannot afford them. More importantly, such systems lack the flexibility to evolve over time and adapt to different environments. In our previous NSF funded CCLI project “Evolvable wireless laboratory design and implementation for enhancing undergraduate wireless engineering education”, we have developed and demonstrated the first nationwide example of evolvable software defined radio (SDR) based laboratories for three existing undergraduate courses. These laboratories have been well received by the students, and have significantly improved the learning outcomes of such courses. Furthermore, these labs have attracted students to these courses: the enrollment of these courses has increased drastically after the introduction of these labs. Based on our success of this project, we are developing a suite of experiments and laboratories into a sequence of courses (ranging from freshmen year introductory course to senior year elective courses and capstone design projects) that vertically integrates the SDR based experiment approach in this NSF TUES type II project. We are also equipped with hardware based experiment systems to evaluate and compare the teaching effectiveness of the novel SDR approach to that of traditional hardware equipment approach. The novel SDR approach and laboratory suite will be implemented, transferred and institutionalized at three participating institutions (Wright State University, Miami University (a mostly undergraduate serving institution), and Central State University (an HBCU)) to demonstrate the capability of enhancing student learning and easy adaptability by other institutions.