Taking advantage of a beautiful autumn day in Sydney, Professor Tim Hooper, the inventor of TIMS, got together with Carlo and Alfred over lunch to discuss the latest additions to the TIMS DSP-based range of experiments: Turbo Coding. This area promises to be an exciting addition to the existing coding schemes covered by TIMS and is an important step in the direction of more DSP-enabled building blocks for users.
Professor Hooper confessed that he was pleasantly surprised that the hands-on approach offered by TIMS which he developed over 40 years ago was still today proving to be the most meaningful way for students to get a deep understanding of the fundamentals..despite the proliferation of simulation packages and other less tangible teaching methodologies.
Tim, Alfred and Carlo also discussed new advanced in enabling TIMS for distance learning, so that users can experience real hardware signals even over the tyranny of distance.
It may be of interest for users to know that Alfred & Carlo were undergraduate students of Tim Hooper at University of New South Wales back in the early 1980's. This formed the basis for a relationship which has lasted for over three decades.
As long as students still need to experience first hand the magic of making the maths come alive, then TIMS has an important place in the Telecommunication lab.
