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Wireless carts: an inexpensive education and research platform

Published:20 October 2005Publication History

ABSTRACT

As part of a complete wireless networking education, students must have an in-depth understanding of basic concepts such as signal propagation, environmental effects on RF signals, FCC regulations and limits, power levels, antenna construction and antenna operation. Lecture based curricula can only go so far in preparing a wireless professional to succeed in industry. To be complete, the student must have practical experience.Our wireless coursework is comprised of three courses, the first of which is a wireless concepts course. This course has a significant hands-on component that requires students to understand the tools while applying what they are learning about the physical layer and basic network operation. The students engage in two very large projects; a wireless building survey and signal propagation testing using specialized equipment.As part of the projects, students create a series of experiments with a variety of equipment and provide useable test data. Examples of the tests include interference, Fresnel zone effects, throughput, range and the effects of multi-path on signals. However, in the presence of an increasing number of wireless networks, obtaining real world, reliable data illustrating the various physical layer phenomena is difficult. Our solution was to build several wireless carts outfitted with various antennas, transmission equipment from different portions of the spectrum and that used different encoding or modulation techniques. In addition, a major requirement was that the carts be able to operate away from infrastructure support, including AC power.The carts have enabled students to isolate themselves from other wireless signals and have provided an extremely adaptive platform for experiments and projects. This paper will describe the coursework, projects, functions, costs, lessons learned and the data gathered as a result of their deployment.

References

  1. 47 CFR part 15, Subpart C, Intentional Radiators and Radiated Emission Limits.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  2. http://depts.alverno.edu/ac/acscheduling/wireless.htmGoogle ScholarGoogle Scholar
  3. www.microwavedata.com/products/datasheets/iNET900.aspGoogle ScholarGoogle Scholar
  4. Hill, Lawrence, "Equipment Safety in the Wireless Networking Laboratory Environment", ACM SIGITE proceedings, SIGITE Annual Conference, Newark, NJ 2005 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library

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  1. Wireless carts: an inexpensive education and research platform

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      Reviews

      Elizabeth A. Unger

      The Rochester Institute of Technology has introduced a course in wireless technology and its deployment, using inexpensive carts as mobile experimental laboratories for their students. This approach to instruction provides students with a fundamental understanding of wireless networks, starting with the physical layer and proceeding through to the current products used to form wireless networks. The student is first introduced to an interference-free environment outside, so as to understand the basics of the technology from the perspective of a network designer and from that of a manager. This is possible because the carts have an uninterruptible power supply capability of up to four hours and can be moved around the campus. The authors give an introduction to the theory of wireless networks and provide the basic information on wireless networks in an interference-free environment. They then cover interference from other networks in a variety of situations. This is a very forward-looking way of providing hands-on experience interspersed with theory. It gives students pragmatic instruction and is affordable. Online Computing Reviews Service

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      • Published in

        cover image ACM Conferences
        SIGITE '05: Proceedings of the 6th conference on Information technology education
        October 2005
        402 pages
        ISBN:1595932526
        DOI:10.1145/1095714
        • General Chair:
        • Rob Friedman

        Copyright © 2005 ACM

        Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        • Published: 20 October 2005

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        Overall Acceptance Rate176of429submissions,41%

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