To help address a critical need for wireless engineers, five engineering professors from the University of South Florida have embarked on a project code-named WAMI (for Wireless and Microwave Instruction). We developed what we believe is an innovative engineering curriculum centered on a state-of-the-art wireless and microwave laboratory.

WAMI's first order of business was a thorough revamping of the "field and waves" laboratory, which meant starting from ground zero. The lab had been using the same Hewlett-Packard test and measurement equipment since the early 1960s.

We wanted to enable our students to look at a wide range of interactions that result when they design and link components and circuits in various ways. Being able to use spectrum analyzers, network analyzers and other related instruments would allow them to fully characterize and understand how RF circuits and systems work in real situations.

We secured grants from the National Science Foundation and Hewlett-Packard Co. that enabled us to equip six student lab stations and one instructor lab station with the same state-of-the-art, high-performance tools used by professional engineers to measure microwave and RF phenomena. Each lab station also includes a PC that is networked to a high-powered server and that includes state-of-the-art software programs needed by the students for designing, modeling, simulating and analyzing circuits and systems.

The WAMI team developed a curriculum for the new junior-year class that weaves together circuit, signal and system concepts and that encourages open-ended problem solving.

One goal of this class is to relate the parts to the whole and vice versa, with students examining components and then studying how those components relate to the system as a whole. We also have the students migrate back and forth between the simulation and measurement worlds.

In addition, we've integrated a variety of subspecialty areas into one class: fields and waves, communication theory and modulation, and circuit design.

Our approach is to take it from the perspective of building a wireless product.

That takes the students from the conceptual stage all the way through production, letting them look at the various components and see how they fit together. They thus gain a better appreciation of what it means to be an engineer and how to think like one. For more information on the WAMI lab, access www.eng.usf.edu/WAMI.

Lawrence Dunleavy is an associate professor and Horace C. Gordon Jr. is a lecturer at the University of South Florida, Tampa.

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