Modern wireless communications and applications

Check out this short introductory video clip of the course!

Max amount of FITech students: 30 adult learners

Wireless communication has progressed exponentially in all dimensions during the last decade. We are now quite close to the ultimate limit of the information transfer rate which is known by Shannon capacity. Telecommunication becomes part of almost all branches of technical and nontechnical life. Besides its main application in connecting people either over voice or media communication as well as social networks, it offers also important human-to-machine and machine-to-machine communications. For example, the 5G network provides high data rates, ultra-reliable, and very small latency wireless connection, therefore, it will be part of future industry and automation.

This course is designed mainly for students without a necessary deep background in telecommunications. The course focuses on the fundamentals and concepts of telecommunications, telecommunication systems, and applications.

Course contents

• time-frequency domain relations
• modulation techniques
• antennas
• digital communication
• correlator receivers
• OFDM
• wireless channels
• challenges (noise, fading, time-varying)
• transmitters and receivers
• software-defined radio (SDR)
• channel capacity
• MIMO
• opportunistic scheduling
• communication quality (SNR, Packet losses, Data rates, Throughputs, Outages, Delay and Latency, QoS, QoE)
• PAN (Bluetooth, Zigbee)
• WiFi (802.11X)
• cellular networks (GSM, 3G, 4G, and 5G)
• 5G/6G networks in industrial applications
• wireless sensor networks
• UWB
• satellite communication and satellite networks
• edge and cloud computing
• IoT and applications

The objective of this course is to provide rich, diverse, and up-to-date material about telecommunication technology. Students who complete this course successfully will at least

• be aware of the main concepts of telecommunication
• understand the main challenges of wireless communication and how they have been addressed
• be aware of telecommunication quality measures
• understand some telecommunication standards (e.g., WiFi, PAN, cellular networks) and being able to select the proper technology for certain application
• get to know the operation of wireless sensor networks
• be aware of cloud computing and IoT

Course material

• Lecture Notes
• Additional material

Completion methods

• 2 online sessions per week. 24 hours total.
• Quizzes, homework, and written report.

More information on the University of Vaasa course page. Course schedule is available in Peppi, when implementation is published.

You can get a digital badge after completing this course.