Hi all,
I was a participant in the DARPA Spectrum Challenge last year. Inspired
by
the Challenge, I developed a new course in which students learned about
wireless communications and software radio in the context of a Spectrum
Challenge-like competition. It was offered for the first time in Fall
2014
at the University of Thessaly, Greece, to a group of about 20
undergraduate
and masters students in the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering. Since the course may be of interest to some in this group,
I
am sharing more information about it here.
The infrastructure for the course (lab materials, software radios,
compute
devices, software and other utilities) were hosted by WITest
http://witestlab.poly.edu/site/index.php, the GENI wireless testbed at
the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering.
In the first half of the course, students studied wireless communication
and software radio basics through lectures and guided lab exercises. On
their midterm exam, 50% of the points were earned by answering questions
from this mailing list
http://witestlab.poly.edu/respond/sites/hy448fall2014/files/hy448-midterm-exam.pdf
In the second half of the course, students (in teams) developed software
radios and competed against one another in a format similar to the
Spectrum
Challenge. Students also presented their designs in a poster session
attended by other faculty in the department. Two prizes were awarded:
one
for “the best innovative idea” from among the designs implemented for
the
competition (selected by the faculty committee), and one for the team
that
won the tournament.
The results (tournament visualizations, student posters, photos) are
available on this page
http://witestlab.poly.edu/respond/sites/hy448fall2014/page/hy448-design-challenge
for interested readers.
I’d be happy to answer any questions about this course.
Best,
Fraida F.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering
