By Erin Fife
Senior electrical engineering students demonstrated their talents at a software radio competition on Thursday.
Four teams competed to build the best radio. Team Radiohead was the winner.
'Software radio is a big buzzword in the industry right now,' said Jon Bohanon from the company Applied Signal Technology and a judge at the competition.
Software radio is where radios take an analog signal and transfer it to a digital code. Software radio involves the same principles as a digital cell phone.
The winner of the competition was the team whose radio has the lowest bit error rate, or the team with the fewest mistakes in the decoding process, said Sarah Hedengren, a member of team Radiohead.
'These students have done an excellent job. This is an excellent way to prepare for what they will discover in the industry,' Bohanon said.
Because of the brand new technology that has helped this field grow, this was the first year this competition took place, said Chris Schwartz, a member of team Radio Hut.
Neither the students nor the faculty knew what problems were going to arise because it was new to everyone involved, said Tony Allen, a member of team Sensou No Inu.
'Many of the answers to our problems were not found in a book,' said Brent Fawson, a member of team Radiohead.
'You get one piece working, then another piece working, but that doesn''t mean they will work together,' said David Sevey, a member of team Radio Hut.
The students have worked hundreds of hours throughout the semester to build their radios.
Each team had several different members with many different specialties, Schwartz said.
This project went better than expected. Everyone seems to enjoy the experience, said Michael Rice, associate professor of electrical engineering and co-project coordinator.
'It was a lot of work, a lot of fun and very rewarding,' Fawson said.
Wednesday night many of the team members did not get any sleep, Schwartz said.
'They lived here, ate here, slept here,' said Monica Hyatt, wife of Drew Hyatt, a member of team Radio Hut.
These kinds of experiences are the best way to teach a student in any field, Rice said. Practical experience is what helps a student prepare for a future.
These types of radios are especially useful for the military. A central control room can use software radio to interpret the signals of many different types of radios through one source, Fawson said.
For example, instead of 11 radios accepting messages from 11 different sources, one radio can accept messages from 11 different sources.