Telecommunications Engineering (18 months, Master of Science)

Objectives & Outcomes

General Objectives

• To provide education leading to an academic degree, namely a Master of Science in Telecommunications Engineering.
• To develop the student’s capacity to think, write and speak effectively and creatively.
• To develop the student’s analytical, decision-making and communication competencies together with those qualities of self-reliance, responsibility, integrity and self-awareness which will promote personal achievement and contribution to organizations.
• To obtain a good grounding in advanced topics in Telecommunications Engineering through the core subjects and attain specialization through the elective courses.
• To provide the student with the advanced skills, necessary for further advancement in an academic and/or professional career.     

Specific Objectives

• To intensify and deepen knowledge gained in the Bachelors programme in Computer / Electrical / Electronic Engineering.
• To prepare students for a lifetime career in industry, government and various institutions in the area of Telecommunications Engineering, by establishing a foundation for lifelong learning and development.
• To ensure a learning experience which will provide students with the theoretical background and the applied know-how for engineers in Telecommunications to enter any sector of the industry as key personnel.
• To promote wired and wireless communications in Cyprus through education, research and practical experience.
• To expose students to the area of scientific research and independent study and to demonstrate creativity and conduct original research work through the completion of the M.Sc. thesis in a specialized topic in the area of Telecommunications Engineering.
• To analyse and specify the software and hardware requirements appropriate for a solution to a problem in the area of Telecommunications Engineering.
• To design, implement, and evaluate solutions to Telecommunications Engineering problems, according the desired specifications.
• To apply mathematical foundations and engineering principles during the modelling, design, and evaluation of telecommunications systems, in a way that demonstrates comprehension of the trade-offs involved in design choices.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this program, the students should be able to:

• State and identify concepts relating to data communications; communication protocols and layered protocol architecture and describe the different network topologies.
• Compare different protocols in terms of their throughput, error detection and correction, reliability and stochastic or deterministic channel allocation.
• Describe the underlying principles of transmission, detection and explain the basic principles of digital modulation and demodulation for wireless systems.
• Define the engineering principles of wireless transmission, cellular systems and the different cellular/mobile systems and analyse and calculate the path loss, fading profiles and effects of multi-path propagation.
• Generate appropriate orthogonal codes, on the basis of user demand, service requirements and fairness of resource allocation, for use in FDD and TDD UMTS systems.
• Explain the mathematical principles behind RF and microwave devices and analyze the EM transmission characteristics of planar-lines and waveguides.
• Perform scattering parameter analysis of RF and microwave networks containing passive distributed components and design and analyze microwave / RF oscillators / mixers / filters / end-to-end microwave / RF communication links.
• Recognise the uses of antennas, RF components and sources and analyse and evaluate their performance. Design antenna elements in MATLAB and / or CST.
• Assess the propagation of electromagnetic signals in physical environments perform simple path loss calculations.
• Demonstrate ability to conduct in-depth research, both individually as well as in teams, in a specific area of Telecommunications as well as manage project. Recognise and describe legal, social or ethical obligations.
• Construct efficient codes for data on imperfect communication channels and describe possible implications and evaluate performance of various coding techniques over fading channels.
• Describe, design  and implement the typical architecture of a digital receiver.
• Describe the operation principles and technology of optical fibre networks and design optical transmitter / receiver and identify possible sources of loss.
• Recognise and evaluate modern satellite multiple access, modulation and coding schemes and simulate satellite communication links.
• Describe and compare different models of parallel and distributed computing, basic techniques for designing algorithms in these models and write parallel programs using them.
• Utilize advance algorithmic techniques such as approximation and randomization techniques in order to provide algorithmic solutions of proved guarantee performance for the problems that are hard to solve.
• Apply fundamentals of discrete probability theory, the theory of Markov chains, randomized data structures, the probabilistic method, counting techniques and graph theory for modeling, design and analysis of algorithmic problems and solutions.