In Process Development of an Advanced Undergraduate Communications Laboratory

The current and future growth in telecommunications (National Information Infrastructure) requires technical expertise at all levels to develop, install and operate the equipment. From discussions with the telecommunications industrial leaders, telecommunications and networking professionals are needed. To meet this need, the Electrical Engineering Technology (EET) department at Purdue University has expanded the communications curriculum to include courses in RF circuit design, wireless communications, and fiber optics. To support these new courses the existing laboratory needed to be expanded, but rather than just add new equipment, we wanted to design a completely integrated communications lab that would provide true hands-on experience for our students. This paper describes the in process development of an advanced telecommunications lab integrated around a fully operational cellular base station. The communications system consists of a cellular base station, a fiber optic backbone, and a digital telephony switch. Each communications course will work with a different aspect of the overall communications system. For example, the RF course can use the cellular telephony system to understand the effects of RF propagation and to study, design and develop the RF circuits used for transmission and reception of the cellular signals. Alternatively, the fiber optics course can use the cellular system to study and measure the performance of the fiber optics backbone. The advantage of this approach is that both the students in the RF course and fiber course will be working with the complete system and not just an isolated part of a communication system.