RF Equipment for Wireless Networks, 5 op

Core content

• NOISE AND POWER
  -Fundamentals
  -Signal-to-noise ratio
  -Sources of noise
  -Noise factor, noise figure
  -Noise in cascaded systems
  
  After the section, a student is able to fluently use units of power, voltage, and impendance, and do decibel calculations. She/he is able to explain different sources of noise, understand the nature of thermal noise, equivalent noise temperature, and noise figure, and do calculations on those. Further, he understands the impact of signal-to-noise ratio requirements on the radio system performance. The student is also able to understand how noise and noise figure builds up in a cascaded system, and do related calculations.
  
  
• ANTENNA LINE ELEMENTS
  -Feeders
  -Low noise amplifiers
  -Filters and combiners
  -Distributed antenna systems
  -Repeaters
  
  A student understands the definition and significance of antenna line to the system performance. She/he is able to list different antenna line elements in typical wireless networks. Student becomes familiar with product specifications of different antenna line equipment is able to retrieve relevant information from them.
• RX/TX ARCHITECTURES
  -Main analog components
  -Receiver architectures
  -Non-idealities and performance measures of the analog front-end components
  
  A student can explain different receiver architectures and compare their advantages and disadvantages in practical implementations. She/he understands the main sources of analog RF imperfections, can explain their effects on the receiver performance, and can relate the imperfections to the practical radio system specifications. A student is also able to explain alternative transmitter structures and related RF imperfections, especially regarding the power amplifier characteristics.
  
• ANTENNAS
  -Antenna fundamentals
  -Antenna characteristics
  -Basic antenna types
  -Antennas in cellular radio systems
  
  This part gives the students an overview of the antenna fundamentals and key properties of antennas used in wireless systems in general. The students understand the definition of an ideal dipole and its radiation properties. Students understand how different requirements set for a wireless base station antenna will affect the antenna performance. Students are able to assess the performance of an antenna based on its properties such as gain, efficiency, radiation pattern, impedance, beam width, band width, and polarization.
• DIVERSITY
  -Principles of fading channel
  -Diversity methods
  -Signal combining
  -Transmit diversity
  
  A student understands the idea of diversity transmission and reception. She/he knows and is able to analyze fundamentally different diversity techniques to achieve uncorrelated channels, and understand different diversity combining techniques and do related calculations.
  
  
• ANTENNA ARRAYS
  ADVANCED ANTENNA TECHNIQUES
  -Principles of antenna arrays
  -Antenna array types
  -Array factor
  -Principle of beam steering
  -Philosophy of base station antennas
  -Introduction to adaptive antenna systems
  
  Students are able to mathematically express the response of general and ideal antenna array as a function of elevation angle of the arriving signal. Students can explain how the antenna beam can be formed and steered using an antenna array. Students realize how a cellular base station antenna can be formed starting from a set of ideal dipole elements placed in the form of an array. Students are able to explain how the amplitude and phase weights of different array elements affect the radiation properties of the antenna as a whole.
  
• MULTI-ANTENNA SYSTEMS
  -Principle of MIMO
  -Space-time block coding principle
  -Multi-antenna transmission techniques
  
  A student can discriminate multi-element antennas and multi-antenna transmission systems. She/he understands the principle of parallel data transmission using multiple antennas and the difference between antenna diversity and true MIMO systems.
  

Complementary knowledge

• Understanding the Y-factor method and calculating noise figure based on measurements. Being able to explain the basic methods to measure RF power.
• Understanding the existence of additional RF-equipment that can be used in wireless systems to improve the network performance. Some examples of these for cellular networks are introduced in the lectures such as distributed antenna systems and RF-repeaters.
• Students are able to discriminate antennas based on their type. Students are able to understand the different methods of antenna tilt and their impact on the network performance.
• Calculations on equal gain and maximal ratio combining.
  Undersintanding the performance of transmit diversity techniques. Understanding the drawbacks of correlation and power inbalance, as well as estimation error in channels.
• Understanding the concept of adaptive antennas. Learning to use a tool to draw radiation patterns of antenna arrays using pen and paper. Students are able to list some general window functions for amplitude weighting of antenna arrays.
• Student is able to list and shortly describe some advanced multi-antenna transmission systems such as space-time block coding, BLAST, and PARC.

Specialist knowledge

• Student understand the meaning of theorethical equations od EM vawes and is able to describe the relation between maxwell's formulas and propagation constant.
• Understanding the bit error rate performance improvement achieved by diversity combining.