Teaching wireless networking technologies in the internet-of-things using ARM based microcontrollers

This paper presents the ongoing work of applying the project-based learning approach to teaching IoT technologies in an advanced embedded networking course, which is offered to electrical and computer engineering students. The emphasis of this course is on teaching the prominent wireless networking technologies IEEE 802.11 (WiFi) for the IoT and the development of the IoT applications. Microcontrollers have been used to teach fieldbus networks or distributed real-time control systems. However, conventional efforts of teaching regular computer networks (e.g., the Ethernet) mostly make use of either personal computers (e.g., desktop, laptop) or single board computers installed with Linux or Windows operating system. The unique feature of this ongoing work is to use existing ARM-based microcontrollers without complex operating systems to teach wired and wireless network technologies in the IoT. Our primary experiences indicate that ARM-based microcontrollers with networking connectivity provide the flexible, cost-effective, well-supported platforms for developing the IoT applications.