Take Radio System Design at your university!
The Radio System Design course is offered as a senior undergraduate or entry level graduate course with full instructional content, including text, online educational modules, quizzes and project that can be built at home.
The course is offered through your universities independent study program.
In the US, there is often a course number dedicated to independent study. The Radio System Design course can be a guided independent study course taken as part of your program of study. Often you will need an adviser for an independent study course. Please ask a faculty in an area related or you enjoy working with and have them contact Prof. Ricketts, to setup the course for you.
Outside the U.S. there are often similar independent study programs, please ask your university adviser what might be possible. The course can be setup for any number of students. Please have your university adviser contact Prof. Ricketts with any questions.
Example Course Syllabus
| Lec # | Date | Lecture | Mod # | HW | Labs |
| 1 | 13-Jan | Introduction and Basic Definitions | Lab 0 | ||
| 2 | 20-Jan | Analog Modulation | 1-3 | 1&2 | Lab 1 – Analog Modulation |
| 3 | 27-Jan | Digital Modulation | 4-5 | 3 | Lab 2 – Pulse Shaping and QAM Constellations |
| 4 | 3- Feb | Transmitter (Exam 1) | 6-8 | 4 | Lab 3 – Digital Tx Non-idealities |
| 5 | 10-Feb | Nonlinearity | 9-12 | Lab 4 – Nonlinearity | |
| 6 | 17-Feb | Bandwidth, Shannon’s & Propagation | 13-15 | 6 | Lab 5 – Channel Capacity |
| 7 | 24-Feb | Receivers | 16-18 | 7 | Lab 6 (now 6) – Receiver Design |
| 8 | 3 – Mar | Receivers non-idealities | 19-23 | 8 | Lab 7 (now 7, etc) – Noise Figure and SNR |
| 9 | 17-Mar | Transmission Lines | 24-27 | Lab 8 – SA & Noise | |
| 10 | 24-Mar | Smith & Two port networks (Exam 2 ) | 28-29 | Lab 9 – VNA | |
| 11 | 31-Mar | Passive components & Microstrip Devices | 30-31 | Lab 10 – Microwave T-line components | |
| 12 | 7-Apr | Final Project Overview | Project Design | ||
| 13 | 14- Apr | (no class) | |||
| 14 | 21-Apr | Build | |||
| 15 | 28-Apr | Test | |||
| 16 | TBD | Final Demo | Presentation |
You will review online modules, take tests on each module and then two exams online. The final part is to build your radio at home! You will be provided with a kit that includes all pieces to print and cut the entire radio without special equipment. You may use your universities equipment to test or build an extra mixer and use your PC laptop audio board to measure signals.