ECE 5377/7377

Lectures, Labs, and Project Deadlines

Fall 2026

Meeting Time: Fridays, 9:00 AM to 11:50 AM

Meeting Location: Autonomous Drone Teaming Lab, 5538 Dyer Street

Textbook: Robert W. Heath Jr., Introduction to Wireless Digital Communication: A Signal Processing Perspective, Pearson, 2017.

This schedule is designed around a once-per-week integrated lecture and laboratory format. Each Friday meeting will typically include lecture, discussion, demonstrations, and lab or project support. Each readiness quiz is released at the beginning of a two-week instructional unit. The quiz is due before class on the day the corresponding laboratory assignment is released. All material assessed by the readiness quiz will therefore be introduced before the quiz deadline. Readiness quizzes are intended to prepare students for the upcoming laboratory rather than function as separate traditional homework assignments. Relevant readings identify the textbook sections most directly connected to each meeting. Students should complete the listed readings before class unless otherwise directed.
Week Date Theme Lecture Topics Relevant Reading Assignment Released Due Before Class
1 Aug. 28 SDR Environment and Signal Fundamentals Course logistics; wireless system overview; software-defined radio philosophy; MATLAB; GNU Radio; UHD; USRP N310 architecture; remote laboratory access; project overview; deterministic and random signals; sample mean; variance; average power; linear and decibel SNR. Heath:
Section 1.3, Signal Processing for Wireless Communication
Section 2.2, Overview of a Wireless Digital Communication Link
Section 2.3.1, Additive Noise
Sections 3.1.1 and 3.2.1-3.2.3
  • Lab 1: MATLAB, GNU Radio, Remote Access, and N310 Familiarization
  • Readiness Quiz 1
 —
2 Sept. 4 Spectrum, Sampling, and Signal Analysis Fourier-spectrum interpretation; FFT resolution; frequency-bin locations; record duration; autocorrelation; power spectral density; total signal power; rectangular-pulse spectra and sinc zeros; sampling theorem; Nyquist rate; samples per period; aliasing; low-pass filtering; spectrum measurements; measured versus ideal signals. Heath:
Sections 3.1.2-3.1.6, Signals, Systems, Fourier Analysis, Bandwidth, and Sampling
Sections 3.2.4-3.2.7, Stationarity, Ergodicity, Power Spectrum, and Filtering Random Signals 		— Lab 1
3 Sept. 11 Digital Modulation I Bits per symbol; PAM mapping; PSK and QAM constellation coordinates; constellation mean; average symbol energy; constellation normalization; interpretation of measured constellation diagrams. Heath:
Sections 2.7.1-2.7.3, Modulation and Demodulation
Section 4.1, Transmitter for Complex Pulse-Amplitude Modulation
Sections 4.2-4.2.3, Symbol Mapping, Constellations, Mean, and Energy
  • Lab 2: Signal Generation, FFT, PSD, and Spectrum Measurements
  • Readiness Quiz 2
 Readiness Quiz 1
4 Sept. 18 Digital Modulation II and Pulse Shaping Minimum constellation distance; nearest-neighbor detection; symbol energy and bit energy; modulation order and SNR; BER and SER behavior; Nyquist pulse-shaping criterion; raised-cosine rolloff and bandwidth; upsampling; transmit pulse shaping; matched filtering; downsampling and symbol decisions. Heath:
Sections 3.4.1-3.4.4, Downsampling, Upsampling, and Multirate Filtering
Section 4.3, Bandwidth and Power
Sections 4.4-4.4.5, Communication and Detection in AWGN
Sections 4.5-4.5.2, Digital Pulse Shaping and Matched Filtering 		— —
5 Sept. 25 Synchronization I Wireless channel magnitude and path loss; symbol synchronization versus frame synchronization; timing error; sample and symbol offsets; cross-correlation; correlation-based packet detection; correlation lag; frame-start estimation; phase rotation. Heath:
Sections 2.3.3-2.3.4, Path Loss and Multipath Propagation
Section 2.7.4, Demodulation with Channel Impairments
Sections 5.1.1-5.1.3, Flat-Fading Model and Synchronization
Sections 5.5-5.6.2, Propagation and Path-Loss Models
  • Lab 3: Digital Modulation, BER, and Constellation Measurements
  • Readiness Quiz 3
  • Lab 2
  • Readiness Quiz 2
6 Oct. 2 Synchronization II and Channel Estimation Carrier-frequency offset and accumulated phase; sensitivity of higher-order phase modulation; training-sequence autocorrelation; scalar least-squares channel estimation; training energy; estimation residuals; mean-square error; channel equalization using an estimated channel coefficient. Heath:
Sections 3.5.1-3.5.2, Linear Algebra and Least-Squares Estimation
Sections 5.1.4-5.1.6, Channel Estimation, Equalization, and Carrier Frequency Synchronization
Sections 5.4.1-5.4.3, Frequency-Offset Models and Estimation 		— —
7 Oct. 9 OFDM I Flat fading versus frequency-selective fading; multipath channel taps; channel memory; OFDM motivation; subcarrier spacing; useful symbol duration; DFT and FFT interpretation; IFFT-based transmission; FFT-based reception; subcarrier orthogonality. Heath:
Section 5.2.1, Frequency-Selective Channel Model
Sections 5.2.3-5.2.4, Frequency-Domain Equalization and OFDM
Sections 5.7.1-5.7.4, Channel Selectivity and Signal Models
  • Lab 4: Packet Detection and Synchronization
  • Readiness Quiz 4
  • Lab 3
  • Readiness Quiz 3
8 Oct. 16 OFDM II and Frequency-Domain Equalization Cyclic-prefix construction and removal; cyclic-prefix sufficiency; channel-memory coverage; cyclic-prefix overhead and efficiency; pilot placement; pilot sufficiency; interpolation; pilot-based least-squares channel estimation; one-tap frequency-domain equalization; deep fades; noise enhancement. Heath:
Section 5.2.4, Frequency-Domain Equalization with OFDM
Section 5.3.2, Least-Squares Channel Estimation in the Frequency Domain
Section 5.4.4, Frequency-Offset Estimation and Frame Synchronization for OFDM 		— —
9 Oct. 23 Diversity and MIMO Fundamentals SISO, SIMO, MISO, and MIMO classifications; transmitted and received signal dimensions; MIMO channel-matrix dimensions; interpretation of individual channel coefficients; matrix rank; independent spatial streams; spatial multiplexing versus spatial diversity. Heath:
Sections 6.1-6.1.3, Introduction to Multi-Antenna Communication
Section 6.2.1, SIMO Flat-Fading Channel Models
Sections 6.4.1-6.4.2, Spatial Multiplexing and MIMO Channel Models
  • Lab 5: OFDM Transceiver and Equalization
  • Readiness Quiz 5
  • Lab 4
  • Readiness Quiz 4
10 Oct. 30 Diversity, Beamforming, and MIMO Capacity Selection combining; equal-gain combining; maximum-ratio combining; linear combining; phase alignment; beamforming; MIMO training and least-squares channel estimation; scalar Shannon capacity; spectral efficiency; simple two-stream MIMO capacity; spatial multiplexing performance. Heath:
Sections 6.2.2-6.2.3, Antenna Selection and Maximum-Ratio Combining
Section 6.3.3, Transmit Beamforming
Sections 6.4.1-6.4.6, Spatial Multiplexing, Detection, Precoding, and Channel Estimation 		— —
11 Nov. 6 Modern Wireless Systems LTE, 5G, and Wi-Fi physical-layer overview; information-theoretic perspective; entropy and spectral efficiency; wireless standards; relationships among single-carrier modulation, OFDM, diversity, beamforming, and spatial multiplexing; project workshop. Heath:
Sections 1.2.3-1.2.4, Cellular and Wireless Local Area Networks
Section 2.4.1, Lossless Source Coding and Entropy
Section 2.6, Channel Coding and Channel Capacity
Sections 6.5-6.5.5, MIMO-OFDM Transceiver Techniques 		Lab 6: MIMO Measurements and Performance Evaluation
  • Lab 5
  • Readiness Quiz 5
12 Nov. 13 Implementation Examples and Project Workshop Standards perspective; optional OpenAirInterface reference-design discussion; optional AI-assisted wireless signal-processing examples; project integration; experimental design; preliminary data analysis; project mentoring. No new required reading.
Review the textbook sections most relevant to the project.
Suggested review: Sections 5.2.4, 6.4.6, and 6.5.1-6.5.5. 		Project Milestone: Project progress check and preliminary results —
13 Nov. 20 Project Work Day Lab 6 wrap-up; project debugging; instructor and TA consultations; analysis of experimental results; presentation preparation; final-report planning. No new required reading.
Review project-specific textbook sections as needed. 		Project work
  • Lab 6
  • Project Milestone
— Nov. 27 Thanksgiving Holiday No class. — — —
14 Dec. 4 Project Presentations Final project presentations and course synthesis. No new required reading. Final Presentation Final Presentation
Final Report due during finals week, Dec. 13 by 11:59 PM
Optional Engineering Outreach Challenge: Students may produce a 60- to 120-second public video explaining a project or course experiment. Upon satisfactory completion by the project due date, students may choose either to drop their lowest Readiness Quiz grade or receive +5 points on the semester project.

This schedule is best-effort as of the beginning of the semester and is subject to change according to the time available in the semester, laboratory readiness, equipment availability, and project needs.