Software Radio Challenge “LaLiga” for Modern Wireless System Education

This Innovative Practice Full Paper presents our methodology and tools for introducing competition in the electrical engineering curriculum. Our focus is on the education of advanced wireless communications technologies and systems. We leverage software radio technologies and open-source software frameworks to design hands-on laboratory exercises and a grading system based on competition. The motivation behind this is to potentiate creativity while unleashing the boundaries of traditional hands-on laboratories. The students form teams and use the open-source software radio framework ALOE and a partially defined protocol that implements a simplified version of the long-term evolution (LTE) standard in software. The proposed student challenge follows the Spanish soccer league format LaLiga, which consists of weekly matches and accumulative scores. The students are tasked to build an optimized transmitter and receiver following the LTE standard guidelines. The evaluation metric is link performance. The students learn how to (1) assess the feasibility, key challenges and costs for meeting the requirements of wireless communications systems, (2) analyze alternative radio design options and argue about their benefits and drawbacks, and (3) develop strategies and solutions to software radio engineering problems. We discuss our experiences and lessons learned with focus on the suitability of the proposed teaching methodology and evaluation process. Whereas the methodology is well perceived by the students, our analysis shows that the competitive scoring mechanism needs further adjustments.