Learning Outcomes

This course will examine technologies underlying current and future wireless communications systems. The unique challenges and opportunities that arise when using wireless connections will be explored in detai. An in-depth study of the physical layer and an understanding of the trade-offs to be made therein will be delivered. Following on from this, higher-layer techniques for establishing wireless physical links will be studied.

Medium Access Control (MAC), and network routing will be covered, with the emphasis on reducing access delay and increasing throughput. Case studies will be presented on wireless LANs, while coursework will look at cellular systems.

On completion of the course, the student is expected to:

1. Explain the concepts of radio transmission to the extent that they impact on wireless communications system design.
2. Explain and contrast different types of multiple access techniques, including TDMA, FDMA, CDMA and Carrier Sense.
3. Demonstrate an understanding of ad-hoc and infrastructure-less networks: in particular their organisation, MAC layer specifications and energy conservation techniques.
4. Discuss the basic concepts of mobility and radio resource management in
wireless networks
5. Discuss the principles of network discovery and routing in ad-hoc wireless networks

Outline Syllabus

Introduction

- A short history of wireless communication, a market for mobile communications, some open research topics, a simplified reference model.
- Radio physical layer
- Frequencies for radio transmission, signal propagation, error control, modulation
- Channel fading effects and mitigation techniques
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- An introduction to commonly used MAC techniques including TDMA, FDMA, CDMA, OFDMA as well as ALOHA and Carrier Sense.
- Routing and topology
- Concepts of ad-hoc wireless routing. Flooding, dynamic source routing and clustering. Power conservation in sensor networks
- State-of-the-art technologies in 4G and 5G wireless systems, IoT.