Work in progress — A proof-of-concept prototype of a communication system for course instructions and laboratory experiments

In electrical and computer engineering, communications is an interesting but challenging area of study for undergraduate students. To improve the quality of learning and understanding of the basic principles of communications, we have been developing a proof-of-concept prototype of a 2.4 GHz communication system as a framework of laboratory experiments suitable for undergraduate students. The framework primarily consists of a small mesh network of mobile robots realized in hardware and software and analog beamforming realized with off-the-shelf hardware components. In this Work-in-Progress paper, we describe our prototype under development and highlight key functionalities of the prototype that will eventually appear as specific contents of laboratory experiments in the near future. From the progress so far, we have observed that development of our proof-of-concept communication system, initially for research in indoor positioning technologies, is suitable for laboratory experiment for a semester-long communications course for upper-division undergraduate students.