Teaching Digital Communications in a Wireless World with MATLAB/Simulink: Who Needs Equations?

Digital communication is traditionally taught by examining the temporal and spectral response and the bit error rate performance of a system in the presence of additive noise as only a set of analytical equations.This approach seems to provide little insight or motivation for the undergraduate student.Undergraduate courses in digital signal and image processing extensively utilize simulation as an adjunct to understanding, but digital communications seems to be a laggard.An undergraduate curriculum in digital communications has been developed that couples the traditional analytical approach with the simulation of the system for further design, analysis, insight and motivation.