Development of a Dynamic Curriculum for Wireless Communications: Addressing the Required Workforce for Wireless Industry and Academia

Seyed A. (Reza) Zekavat; Cheryl Q. Li; Saurav Pathak

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Conference: 2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Publication Date: June 10, 2012
Start Date: June 10, 2012
End Date: June 13, 2012
ISSN: 2153-5965
Conference Session: Electrical and Computer Poster Session
Tagged Division: Electrical and Computer
Page Count: 8
Page Numbers: 25.451.1 - 25.451.8
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--21209
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/21209
Download Count: 397

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Paper Authors

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Seyed A. (Reza) Zekavat Michigan Technological University

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Seyed A. (Reza) Zekavat received his Ph.D. from Colorado State University, in 2002. He is currently an Associate Professor at Michigan Tech and serving as Consulting Faculty at the University of New Haven. He has more than 18 years of research, teaching, and industrial experience. He is the PI for many NSF, ARL, and CERDEC proposals totaling more than $3.4 million. He is also the PI for an NSF education proposal that aimed to improve an interdisciplinary curriculum. He has published more than 110 journal and conference papers, and is the author of the interdisciplinary book “An Introduction to Electrical (EE) engineering for non-EE majors," by Prentice Hall, Jan. 2012, and the Editor of the Handbook of Position Location - Theory, Practice and Advances, Wiley-IEEE, Oct. 2011. In addition, he has co-authored the books Multi-Carrier Technologies for Wireless Communications, Kluwer, and High Dimensional Data Analysis, VDM Verlag. He has also authored four invited chapters in different books and handbooks. He is the Founder and the Director of Wireless Positioning Lab at Michigan Tech. His research interests are space-pace power transfer, wireless communications, and positioning systems. He is the session organizer of Space-Based Power Transfer at IEEE Aerospace Conference, an active technical program committee Chair and TPC member for several IEEE international conferences including IWCMC, Globecom, and ICC. He has also served in the executive chairing committee of many conferences such as IEEE PIMRC 2011 and IEEE SPAWC 2011. He is with the Editorial Board of IET Sensing Systems.

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Cheryl Q. Li University of New Haven

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Cheryl Qing Li joined University of New Haven in the fall of 2011, where she is a Senior Lecturer of the Industrial, System & Multidisciplinary Engineering Department. Li earned her first Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from National University of Singapore in 1997. She served as Assistant Professor and subsequently Associate Professor in mechatronics engineering at University of Adelaide, Australia, and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, respectively. In 2006, she resigned from her faculty job and came to Connecticut for family reunion. Throughout her academic career in Australia and Singapore, she had developed a very strong interest in learning psychology and educational measurement. She then opted for a second Ph.D. in educational psychology, specialized in measurement, evaluation and assessment at University of Connecticut. She earned her second Ph.D. in 2010. Li has a unique cross-disciplinary educational and research background in mechatronics engineering, specialized in control and robotics, and educational psychology, specialized in statistical analysis and program evaluation.

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Saurav Pathak

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Saurav Pathak, is an Assistant Professor of entrepreneurship and innovation in the School of Business and Economics of Michigan Tech. His research on entrepreneurship examines the contextual influences on individual-level entrepreneurial actions by employing multi-level methodological treatment to data available on individual’s entrepreneurial actions. His teaching focuses on entrepreneurship, technology innovation, technology transfer and the protection of intellectual property, quantitative research techniques in entrepreneurship, and design of entrepreneurship survey data.

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Abstract

Development of a Dynamic Curriculum for Wireless Communications Using Factor Analysis: Addressing the Required Workforce for Wireless Industry and Academia Seyed A. (Reza) Zekavat1,2, Qing Li2 1 Michigan Technological University, 2University of New Haven, There are emerging applications for wireless communications systems. New technologies aredeveloped in this field in a rapid pace, and industry is in an increasing need of well trained andskilled graduates. They need these graduates to get integrated with their already existingemployees without any further training or with minimal training.However, in general, currently, students graduated from universities and colleges are not trainedproperly and/or do not have enough hands on experience to address the increasing need ofindustry in many fields of Wireless Communications. In addition, there is not a proper tiebetween wireless industries and academia. In general, there is a feeling in the industry thatstudents do not attain the desired experience and skills. It is desired that students receive handsof experience on Radio and its design and concepts such as Synchronization, OFDM andstandards. In addition, there exists a considerable lack of training and hands-on-experience onworking with advanced instruments (e.g., spectrum analyzer, and network analyzer),programming devices such as DSP and FPGA, and designing and implementing digital signalprocessing methods, and Radio RF components such as Antenna, LNA, Mixer and RF Filters.This paper investigates the contents and the dynamics of a set of curriculum for WirelessCommunications. An exploratory measurement instrument is designed to be distributed acrossmultiple industries in Wireless Communication. This instrument is analyzed to determine astructural model that describes (a) the general topics (curriculum subsets) that should be coveredto create a complete curriculum in Wireless Communications, (b) specific information thatshould be transferred in each general topic (curriculum subset), (c) techniques of developinghands on experience and improving students skills (such as lab and enterprise experiences), and(d) methods of maintaining stronger toes across wireless industry and academia in order to createa dynamic curriculum consistent with emerging technologies in wireless communications.

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Zekavat, S. A. R., & Li, C. Q., & Pathak, S. (2012, June), Development of a Dynamic Curriculum for Wireless Communications: Addressing the Required Workforce for Wireless Industry and Academia Paper presented at 2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, San Antonio, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--21209

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -     Development of a Dynamic Curriculum for Wireless Communications Using    Factor Analysis: Addressing the Required Workforce for Wireless Industry                                  and Academia                                Seyed A. (Reza) Zekavat1,2, Qing Li2                  1                  Michigan Technological University, 2University of New Haven,   There are emerging applications for wireless communications systems. New technologies aredeveloped in this field in a rapid pace, and industry is in an increasing need of well trained andskilled graduates. They need these graduates to get integrated with their already existingemployees without any further training or with minimal training.However, in general, currently, students graduated from universities and colleges are not trainedproperly and/or do not have enough hands on experience to address the increasing need ofindustry in many fields of Wireless Communications. In addition, there is not a proper tiebetween wireless industries and academia. In general, there is a feeling in the industry thatstudents do not attain the desired experience and skills. It is desired that students receive handsof experience on Radio and its design and concepts such as Synchronization, OFDM andstandards. In addition, there exists a considerable lack of training and hands-on-experience onworking with advanced instruments (e.g., spectrum analyzer, and network analyzer),programming devices such as DSP and FPGA, and designing and implementing digital signalprocessing methods, and Radio RF components such as Antenna, LNA, Mixer and RF Filters.This paper investigates the contents and the dynamics of a set of curriculum for WirelessCommunications. An exploratory measurement instrument is designed to be distributed acrossmultiple industries in Wireless Communication. This instrument is analyzed to determine astructural model that describes (a) the general topics (curriculum subsets) that should be coveredto create a complete curriculum in Wireless Communications, (b) specific information thatshould be transferred in each general topic (curriculum subset), (c) techniques of developinghands on experience and improving students skills (such as lab and enterprise experiences), and(d) methods of maintaining stronger toes across wireless industry and academia in order to createa dynamic curriculum consistent with emerging technologies in wireless communications.
AU  - Seyed A. (Reza) Zekavat
AU  - Cheryl  Q. Li
AU  - Saurav Pathak
CY  - San Antonio, Texas
DA  - 2012/06/10
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Development of a Dynamic Curriculum for Wireless Communications: Addressing the Required Workforce for Wireless Industry and Academia
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/21209
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--21209
ER  -