Interview with Joe Mitola

On November 6, 2007 at the SDR Forum Tech Conference in Denver, I interviewed Joe Mitola of Mitre Corp. Mitola is–to understate his role–one of the originators of Software-Defined Radio and cognitive radio (CR). This interview runs 54 minutes, but it’s entertaining, wide ranging and an excellent update on SDR and CR theory and practice.

You can listen to the interview below or download the podcast here.

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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.

Kato Keynote at SDR Forum 6 November 07

Dr. Shuzo Kato of Japan's NICT presented the Day Two keynote at the 2007 SDR Tech Forum, speaking on "Cognitive Radio for Best Spectrum Utilization through SDR- Various Definitions and Implications." This video, capturing all of his slides, is probably the most data-dense introduction to cognitive radio on record.

Dr. Kato received his Ph. D degree in electrical and communications engineering from Tohoku University, Sendai Japan in 1977. From 1977 to 1995, he worked at NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone) Research Laboratories in Japan, specializing personal and satellite communications systems R&D. These include core technology development for TDMA equipment, modems, and forward error correction schemes in addition to ASIC implementation of PHS (Personal Handy Phone) handsets and many satellite communication terminals. He has managed to develop 39 kinds of ASIC developments so far without re-spins including the world first TDMA chip set in 1986, the world fastest Viterbi decoder chip in 1987 and 1993, lowest power consumption ADPCM codec (500 m W) in 1994, best receiver sensitivity (6 dB improvement) and the world first 2 V operating CMOS SOC PHS baseband chip (deploying first coherent demodulator for 384 kb/s mobile terminals) and many others.

Dr. Kato has published over 190 technical papers, held over 75 patents (including a patent which became DOD (Department of Defense, USA) standard in 1998), co-founded International Symposium on Personal Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC). He is a Fellow of the IEEE and IEICE and served as an Editor of IEEE Transaction on Communications, Chairman of Satellite and Space Communications Committee, COMSOC IEEE, a Board Member of IEICE Japan.