ECE 638

This course will cover advanced topics in wireless communications for voice, data, and multimedia. It will also cover optical wireless communications, both indoor and free-space optical communications, and medical wireless communications. The course begins with a brief overview of current wireless systems and standards. It then characterizes the wireless channel, including path loss for different environments, random log-normal shadowing due to signal attenuation, and the flat and frequency-selective properties of multipath fading. Next it examines the fundamental capacity limits of wireless channels and the characteristics of the capacity-achieving transmission strategies. The next focus will be on practical digital modulation techniques and their performance under wireless channel impairments. A significant amount of time will be spent on multiple antenna techniques: MIMO channel model, MIMO channel capacity, and space-time coding. The section on multicarrier modulation provides comprehensive treatment of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). We will further study ultra wideband (UWB) communications, software defined radio and cognitive radio. Next section is related to optical wireless communications (OWC), in particular infrared OWC, visible light communications and free-space optical (FSO) communications. The section on wireless medical communications will cover implanted antennas inside biological tissue, antennas inside a human head, and antennas inside a human body. The course concludes with coding for wireless channels, adaptive modulation, adaptive coding and multiuser detection.