MOOC course: Waves and Systems
Course designed to provide the link between fundamental physics concepts and their application to modern wireless systems. It is intended to provide students that already have a background in engineering, math and physics the necessary tools to understand how these systems work. The course is self-contained and it is devised to be both informative for the curious student and to assist those students wishing to enter an electrical engineering master program. The course presents a balance between theory, application and description of real systems.
- Language: English (videos lectures in Spanish and English)
- Contact: romeu@tsc.upc.edu
If you already have a basic knowledge of electromagnetism after taking “Waves and Systems” you will have learnt the underlying principles that make systems such as wireless communications or radar possible. The course is self-contained and with an engineering bachelor math level you should be able to follow the course.
12 weeks duration, it takes 5-6 hours/week. The course is organized in the following units:
- Unit 0. Introduction
- Course description and objectives.
- Unit 1. Electromagnetic Spectrum.
- Description of the electromagnetic spectrum. Understanding of frequency and wavelength and their measurement units. Visible light as electromagnetic radiation. Ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.
- Unit 2. Radiation
- Electromagetic field description. Understanding radiation as a consequence of accelerating charges. The radiation of a dipole.
- Unit 3. Noise
- Definition. Natural sources of noise. Black body radiation. Noise in one- and two-port devices and its characterization. IEEE and ITU standard definitions.
- Unit 4. Waves
- Understanding wave equation. Maxwell equation and wave equation for the EM fields.
- Unit 5. Transmission line
- Telegraph’s equation. Transmission line parameters. Impedance mismatch, reflection, power transfer.
- Unit 6. Fundamentals of Radio Transmitters and Receivers
- Principles of frequency up- and down-conversion. Receiver dynamic range and its limiting factors.
- Unit 7. Wave propagation
- Definition of Line of Sight and Non-line of Sight Conditions. Deterministic and random channel models.
- Unit 8. Wireless Communications
- Understanding of a wireless communication system physical layer. Computation of link budget.
- Unit 9. Radar
- Understanding how a pulsed radar and continuous wave radar operate.
- Angel Cardama
- Antoni Broquetas
- Joan O’Callaghan
- Jordi Romeu