1. Structure of systems and networks What is terminal, a base station, an MSC; centralized vs. ad-hoc networks; circuit vs packet switched services, Erlangs; the mobile radio channel, the cellular principle, sector cell, macro- micro- picocells; frequency re-use;regulatory constraints and technological constraints; hand-over, raoming; mobility of terminals , of users, of telephone numbers; The cardiovascular system of mobile communications; which service where? trade-off between data-rate, temporal and spatial availability, real-time vs. delayed services; unequal error protection, error concealment techniques; integrating data and voice; localization via radio (E911); systems beyond 3G
2. What makes a mobile communications network work circuit vs packet switching; channel allocation, protocols, control channels and traffic channels; making and breaking a call; interaction with the fixed network
3.Uplink and downlink link budget, path loss, antenna gain, fading margin, receiver sensitivity, log-distance plots, log-normal fading, coverage area
4. The mobile radio channel Basic physics: reflection, diffraction, scattering. Fading (small-scale vs large-scale, flat vs. frequency selective fading; intersysmbol interference; fading rate, average fade duration, mean time between fading Modelling, indoor/outdoor, WSSUS, COST 27,231,259 and 273 models; Rayleigh, Rice, Chi- and Nakagami-m distributions Parameters: delay and angular spread, window functions, coherence bandwidth, power delay profile, Doppler spectrum
5. Receiver and transmitter structure functioal units, data rate plan, modelling and simulation approaches, how to implement a certain technology
6. Modulation and transmission techniques Carrier to Interference Ratio, Signal to Noise and Interference Ratio (SNIR) useful modulation formats, interleaving, channel coding, decoding principles
7. Performance of digital modulation
8. Fading and Diversity
9. Multiple access schemes
10. Basics of MIMO communication
11. Basics of cellular network planning
