Advanced Wireless Communications Networks and Systems

Learning Outcomes

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Analyze practical wireless systems, and current as well as future wireless network protocols
• Appraise advanced modulation and transmission techniques, and practical channel coding schemes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• The architectures of mobile communications, and recent standard mobile systems, such as the fifth generation (5G) system
• The fundamentals of mobile wireless channels, and the limitations of mobile channels imposed on communication systems
• The foundation of understanding and working for future generation of wireless systems

Mobile fundaments

• Multiple access techniques: frequency division multiple access (FDMA), time division multiple access (TDMA), code division multiple access (CDMA), space division multiple access (SDMA)
• Space-time processing: multiple antenna techniques, diversity and multiplexing gains, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems.

Mobile radio channels

• Pathloss, large-scale fading, small-scale fading; Power budge of mobile links
• Doppler spread and coherent time, delay spread and coherent bandwith; flat fading and frequency selective fading.

Modulation and transmission

• Digital modulation overview and digital modulation schemes, spectral efficiency and implementation complexity, power efficiency and green communication
• Carrier and clock recovery, coherent receiver and non-coherent receiver
• Adaptive signal processing for communication, channel equalisation, combating interference, and multi-user detection
• Multi-carrier orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and single-carrier block transmission with frequency domain equalisation.

Practical channel coding schemes

• The fundamentals of forward error correction (FEC) coding, convolutional coding, linear block coding, hard-decision channel decoding, soft-decision channel decoding
• Turbo principle, turbo coding, turbo decoding-detection, near-capacity three-stage concatenated turbo transceiver.

MIMO technology

• The fundamentals of MIMO, diversity and multiplexing gains, beamforming gain, SDMA based multi user system
• Vertical Bell Lab layered space-time (V-BLAST), space-time block codes (STBCs), Linear dispersion codes (LDCs), spatial modulation (SM) and space-shift keying (SSK), and spacetime shift keying (STSK)
• A unified MIMO
• Acquisition of MIMO channel state information (CSI), state-of-the-art near-capacity MIMO systems.

Existing and future wireless systems and standards

• 1st generation (1G) system, 2G system, 3G system, 4G system, %G system, and beyond 5G system.
• Mobile ad hoc network, delay tolerant network, massive MIMO, millimeter wave communication, optical wireless.

Independent Study Hours:

Completion of assessment task 2

Follow-up work 18

Preparation for scheduled sessions 18

Revision 10

Wider reading or practice 54

Total Independent Study Hours: 102

Teaching Hours:

Lecture 36

Tutorial 12

Total Teaching Hours: 48

Total Hours 150

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.