The Spectrum Sharing Radio Challenge (Spectrum-ShaRC) is an international student challenge aimed at stimulating and encouraging students to engage in research and innovation in the field of cognitive radio and spectrum sharing. The challenge runs from October through June 2016. This project will provide travel grants to support student travel for the top eight US-based Spectrum-ShaRC teams to participate in the final round of the challenge to be held at Blacksburg, Virgnia. Radios developed by the student teams are scored and ranked based on criteria that include the ability of the student-developed radios to transfer data quickly and accurately, adapt to interference from other radios, and avoid interfering with other radios in a dynamic radio environments. Participants will also have the opportunity to attend the symposium and summer school at a reduced registration rate. The symposium offers keynote speeches, technical presentations and tutorials on a variety of topics including mathematical methods and software for use in wireless research and research-to-technology transfer from which the students will benefit.
The challenge encourages students to develop innovative solutions that will enable safer and more reliable spectrum sharing. The developed tools for running the challenge as well as the results produced by the participants will be valuable for research and education. Results will be published in the Spectrum-ShaRC challenge report and it is expected that portions of the challenge, tools and outcomes will be published in scholarly articles and used in tutorials and university lectures.
