Hands-On Wireless Thorsten Herfet, Kelvin Chelli

News

12.03.2018

Results

Results are published on CMS. Certificates for the ones who could not register in LSF are being prepared.

18.01.2018

Reminder Today!!

The second lab hour will be held today at C6.3 room 9.08 at 12:15 pm.  See you there. 

21.12.2017

Second Lab Hour

The second lab hour will be on the 18th of January 2018 at 1215 to 1400. In this lab hour we will develop custom modules in GNURadio so do read up on the same. 

06.12.2017

Reminder: First Lab Hour

Hello Everyone, 

The first lab hour will take place tomorrow at 12:15 pm to 02:00 pm at C6.3 9.08. Dont forget to bring your headphones.

Kelvin

30.11.2017

First Lab Hour

The first lab hour will be on the 7th of December 2017 at 1215 to 1400. Please make sure to bring a set of earphone. Also do make sure to read up on GNURadio.

20.11.2017

Change of Date: First Lab Hour

Due to a small delay in procurement of important hardware, we would have to inevitably postpone the Lab Hour that is currently scheduled on 23.11.2017 to the first week of December 2017. The exact date and time will be announced soon. 

10.11.2017

List of papers

Papers have been assigned to all the teams. A list of all papers can be downloaded form CMS. The relevant papers have been mailed to you.

03.11.2017

Seminar Teams

The teams for this seminar are formed and the list can be downloaded from CMS (Information -> Materials ).

26.10.2017

Reminder: Registration in HISPOS

The registration for the seminar is now open in HISPOS.

Show all
 

Introduction

The fundamental goal of this seminar is to bridge the gap between the theory of signal processing in the context of telecommunication systems and the practical working of these concepts in the technologies that we use on a daily basis. In doing so, the course is structured in a way that the necessary theoretical fundamentals are learnt followed by a hands-on experience implementing blocks that can be integrated into the transmitter or receiver chain of a wireless system under study. This seminar also will give you the unique opportunity to work with Software Defined Radios (SDR) and use HackRF One, an open source hardware platform designed to enable the testing and development of modern and next generation radio technologies.

Wireless communication systems of all flavors have distinctly evolved over the years and have become an indispensable part of everyday life. This evolution, be it in the form of cellular, indoor or broadcast technology on the one hand, has enabled several benefits improving user experience, while at the same time rendered these systems to be extremely sophisticated and complex.

Restricting ourselves to the physical layer, an important aspect in the growth of these systems has been the introduction of a multi-carrier scheme to modulate the data called Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM). While classical telecommunication systems always divided the allocated bandwidth between different applications/channels, OFDM splits up the bandwidth allocated for a single transmit signal. The use of OFDM brings several advantages in terms of coping with interference, efficient spectral shaping and low-complexity implementation. As a result many of the wireless systems that we use today and most of the upcoming technologies (like 5G) propose to use OFDM in different flavors in the physical layer. Thus, the focus of this seminar would be to understand OFDM and be able to have a hand-on experience by generating and receiving such signals.

Prerequisites

The Hands-On Wireless Seminar deals with several concepts that are related to telecommunication and thus a good background in the fundamentals of signal processing is required. In particular, a prior participation in the courses offered by the Telecommunications Lab at Saarland University will be favorable. Additionally, basic programming knowledge especially in C++ and Phython is required for successful participation in this seminar. 

Seminar Structure

The seminar will be organised in a way that a majority of the work would be in the semester break. You will form a group of three students and together review the research papers assigned to you as well as contribute towards the implementation of the assigned project. 

  • Paper Review: Groups will be given two recent papers related to OFDM. Each group is then expected to read, understand and write a scientific report for each of the papers. Each report must be a comprehensive review and should be at least four pages in length. A suitable latex template will be provided. The report will contribute to 40% of the final grade.
  • Project: A partially implemented project will be provided and each group is expected to complete the missing part(s) in the project. Implementation will include writing blocks within the GNU Radio platform. The blocks have to be tested for functionality and must be integrated at the transmitter and/or the receiver. The projects will be implemented at the Telecommunication Lab where we will organize an implementation week in the semester break. 
  • Final Presentation: A brief presentation to introduce and demonstrate your project to other students must be prepared at the end of the implementation week. The implementation of the project along with the final presentation will contribute to 60% of the final grade. 

Organisation

  • Credits Points: 7
  • A kick-off will be organised in the first semester week where the seminar will be introduced and further organisational matters will be discussed. 
  • Tentatively groups with three students will be formed.
  • Two research papers related to OFDM will be assigned to each of the groups during the course of the semester. Scientific reports for each of these papers have to be written and submitted to the course instructors. The deadline for the report will be during the semester break and a suitable date will be decided.  
  • The practical component of the seminar will be organised as an implementation week at the Telecommunication Lab during the semester break. Hardware like the HackRF Software-Defined Radio (SDR) will be provided  for each group during this week. 

GNU Radio 

GNU Radio is a free and open software development toolkit that provides blocks that perform various tasks related to signal processing that can be integrated in a Software-Defined Radio (SDR). As the name suggests, an SDR implements signal processing in software and uses a radio front end (external RF hardware) to transmit and receive signals. To know more, visit the GNU Radio website. 

HackRF

The HackRF is a SDR peripheral from Great Scott Gadgets capable of transmitting  and receiving custom signals. It is an open source hardware platform that is used for rapid prototyping and testing of wireless signals and systems. To know more, visit the Great Scott Gadgets website

Literature

TBD



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