Teaching Communications with SDRs: Making It Real for Students

This article describes a class/laboratory organization that culminates in a fully synchronized QPSK system based on Analog Device's ADALM-PLUTO radio. The course is organized as a one-semester senior-level elective with minimum prerequisites and designed so that all students succeed. An emphasis is placed on what synchronization can teach about real-world impairments such as automatic gain control, frequency offset, and timing offset.