The development of a first-year module in communications protocols is described, employing active learning techniques enabled by a new protocol simulator designed for education. The simulator has a simple graphical user interface and is designed for ease of use, rather than speed or flexibility. Protocols can be programmed in a version of C and run from the graphical user interface with no requirement to use an object-oriented programming language or scripting language. The simulator and the active learning approach has proved popular and robust and allows problem-based learning techniques, whereby students invent and test their own protocols, to be used at an early stage in the degree.
Baz M, Mitchell PD and Pearce DAJ. Improvements to CSMA-CA in IEEE 802.15.4. In: Proceedings of the high performance computing and communication and IEEE 9th international conference on embedded software and systems (HPCC-ICESS), Paris, France, 20–22 August, 2012, pp.1549–1554.
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Baz M and Pearce DAJ. Header compression scheme for IEEE 802.15.5. In: Proceedings of the 8th international symposium on wireless communication systems (ISWCS), Aachen, Germany, 6–9 November 2011, pp.407–411.
