Wireless communications are an important part of the telecom industry. Modern air interface standards allow for efficient use of radio spectrum and have expanded wireless services from voice to data and multimedia; new spectrum auctions have made more spectrum available; deployment of 3G networks and the considerations of 4G systems promise to widen further the availability of broadband wireless services.

This course presents fundamentals of Cellular and Wireless Communications. We will study current wireless industry interests, available spectrum, and the details of wireless propagation; we will investigate their use in recent radio technologies such as CDMA and OFDMA and their applications to high-speed radio communications. We will review high levels of radio standards including cdma2000, WCDMA, LTE, WiMAX, and Wi-Fi; we will study their improvements over their previous generations and their network architecture evolutions.

1. Wireless Overview

• Brief History
• Today's facts
• Wireless systems: cellular, satellite, higher frequency
• Spectrum: properties, regulations, licensed and unlicensed bands

2. Cellular Systems

• Coverage and Capacity for FDMA, TDMA, CDMA
• Speech coding
• Handoff
• Interference mitigation
• Diversity
• 2G-3G-4G evolution

3. Radio Propagation

• Wireless propagation basics
• Path loss, shadowing, and fading
• Propagation models
• Outdoor, indoor, and outdoor-to-indoor modeling
• Link budgets

4. Modern Radio Techniques

• Digital Modulation
• BER vs. spectral efficiency
• Equalization
• Diversity
• Channel coding

5. CDMA

• Overview and explanation of concepts
• IS-95
• IS-2000
• WCDMA
• High-speed data standards

6. OFDM and OFDMA

• Overview and explanation of concepts
• Wi-Fi
• WiMAX
• LTE
• Case studies and comparison

7. Wireless Underlying Network

• 2G-3G-4G networks
• Mobility
• Evolution to IP
• Further integration

• Understand the wireless communication environment and its strategic importance.
• Learn techniques for communicating in the wireless environment.
• Explore choices and decisions in the design process of a wireless communication system.
• Analyze existing and new wireless standards, including cellular CDMA and OFDM.
• Analyze, quantify and compare details of modern digital communications.

Introduce the student to wireless communications by covering the key technical attributes of wireless and basic wireless systems and system architectures.

TLEN 5310 (Telecommunication Systems) or equivalent with instructor consent.

Required

If an education officer (EO) is indicated as “required” above, you will need an EO to proctor exams for the course. An EO cannot be a student's relative, friend, coworker, or someone who works for the student. The EO address must be a business address. Provide, change, or update your EO information by completing the EO Information Update form. To ensure we have the most updated EO information, you must provide the EO information every semester – even if it is the same EO.

For those able to come to campus, CAETE provides free proctoring services. Contact us at 303-492-6331 or caete@colorado.edu to schedule an exam appointment.

If you have any questions regarding who qualifies to be an EO, see EO information or contact CAETE.

None: class notes will be provided.

Adobe Acrobat Reader, Microsoft Excel, Internet and e-mail access. Students will access course materials using CUConnect.