SDR Forum Announces Smart Radio Challenge Winners

The SDR Forum has announced the winners of its 2007 Smart Radio Challenge.

The Smart Radio Challenge challenged entrants to tackle some of the knottiest RF problems to which SDR offers potential solutions. These are all real-world problems whose importance has been underscored by recent events.

Problem 1: Spectrum Access for First Responders

The Scenario:
You are a first responder on the scene following a major earthquake. To effectively do your job, you need share significant amounts of data with other first responders including, for example, digital video, high-resolution pictures, high-resolution maps, and building floor plans. However, given the number of responders on the scene, the airwaves are clogged and you can’t send or receive the necessary data in a reliable manner using your conventional radio technology, and communications is compounded by urban propagation conditions. You are very concerned that your inability to communicate information quickly to the proper recipient is costing peoples lives.

The Challenge:
Develop a smart radio system that will automatically find available spectrum within a pre-defined band and transmit data over that band with a pre-defined QoS.

The Winners:
The Virginia Tech Team: VT-CWT – Mark Silvus, Terry Brisebois, Chen Chen, Quinquin Chen, Feng Ge, Gladstone Maraballie, Ying Wang, Alex Young and Charles Bostian.

Problem 2: Communications Interoperability

The Scenario:
A major forest fire has occurred in Southern California . This fire has spread out of control and has forced a number of local communities to evacuate as the fire approaches their homes and offices. Fire fighters and other emergency responders from organizations and jurisdictions nation wide have responded to this emergency, with each group bringing their own equipment. Unfortunately the radio equipments from the various jurisdictions are not interoperable with each other or with the civilian radio infrastructure, and this lack of interoperability is causing a huge problem in coordinating efforts. Without a way to allow these various radio equipments to interoperate, this lack of coordination has put the responders at risk, and has forced many front line responders to carry several radios to allow an appropriate level of inter-organizational communication.

The Challenge:
Develop a smart radio terminal that can automatically provide interoperability between radios with different modulations, voice, and network protocols, and which knows how to forward messages to the proper network – be it commercial or civil.

The Winners:
The Penn State team: Eric Menendez, Ohktay Azarmaresh, Mathew Sunderland, Sven Bilen and Julio Urbina.

Problem 3: Traffic Management

The Scenario:
You are driving into work, and the freeway is a parking lot. You listened to the traffic report on the radio, but given that the weather is poor, there are a lot of accidents, and as such there wasn’t really a lot you could go on to choose an alternate route. As you sit there with your engine running, watching your gas gauge move towards empty, you think to yourself that there must be a better way to manage these kinds of traffic problems.

The Challenge:
Develop a smart radio system that can, using available spectrum, accurately detect the location of many vehicles within the city and assess the velocity along common roadways. The system will then provide user specific route guidance from starting point to ending point which will minimize total fuel consumption.. The system must be future proof, to allow new features and capabilities to be added over an expected 10-year life span of the vehicle without requiring a visit to the dealer.

The Winners:
The KTH Team: Delia…Gonzales, Chithrupa Ramesh, Sandeep Srinivasan, Georgios Panagiotou, Liu Xin, Abdullah Mansoor, Ana … (sorry, details to follow)

The Grand Prize Winner (Photo) is Virgina Tech's CWT Team. In the photo Bruce Fette presents the award to members of the CWT Team. The full team includes Mark Silvus, Terry Brisebois, Chen Chen, Quinquin Chen, Feng Ge, Gladstone Maraballie, Ying Wang, Alex Young and Charles Bostian. (Just who is shown in this photo we'll clear up in a subsequent post; this IS a blog, folks!)

The Best Smart Radio Challenge Paper Award Went to the University of Utah team: Ehsan Azarnasab, Pieman Amini, Salam Akoum, Xuehong Mao, Harsha Rao, and Professor Behrouz Farhang Boroujeny.

The Best Design Award went to the Virginia Tech VT-MPRG Team: Phillip Ballister, Carlos Gonzales, Drew Cormier, Joseph Gaeddert, Shajedul Hasan, Kyehun Lee, Sheref Sayed, Haris Volos and Carl Dietrick.