Up to 30 students will receive travel grants to attend the 2011 Wireless Innovation Forum Conference on Communications Technologies and Software Defined Radio, to be held in Washington DC, November 29th - December 2nd. The grants will provide partial support for travel, housing, and conference attendance. Software-defined radio technology will become increasingly important as the foundation of wireless communications, and attendance at the conference will expose students to many technical and practical aspects of the technology.
The purpose of this project was to provide financial support for students at the graduate and undergraduate level to attend the SDR’11-WInnComm Technical Conference and Product Exposition to be held November 29th to December 2nd in Washington D.C. By attending SDR’11-WInnComm, students were to gain exposure to industry and the real problems they will face when entering the workforce in the design, development, manufacture and deployment of advanced wireless systems. Such exposure helps them to better understand how their course work at university applies in a real world setting, and will accelerate the pace at which they become productive upon graduation. At the conference they met and interacted with the leading researchers and practitioners in this field. SDR’11-WInnComm had 429 registered delegates from over 22 different countries around the world, including many of the recognized technical leaders in the reconfigurable radio community. Students attending SDR’11-WInnComm had access to a rich technical program advancing their domain knowledge, including: 16 Technical sessions presenting over 90 peer reviewed papers that provide a perspective on the current state of the art in reconfigurable radio technology and the practical commercialization of these technologies, future trends or technology innovations. Topics in the paper sessions include security solutions, radio frequency technologies, baseband processing, modeling, spectrum access and sensing, public safety, location based techniques, multi-mode systems and base stations. 9 half day tutorials and "expert lectures" providing hands on experience with technologies and tools 6 Workshops exploring Requirements and Opportunities for Software Defined Radio and Cognitive Radio, Open Source, Policy and Regulation Demonstrations of emerging technologies and solutions to real world problems. 26 travel grant awards were made by the conference’s program committee under this project. Grants of up to $650 were made for students living within 300 miles of the event, and grants of up to $1400 were made for students living more than 300 miles away. Grants were made against actual expenses, and receipts were required before payment was made. The Forum also provided lodging at the conference hotel for a fixed number of nights as a matching contribution when the student stayed in the conference hotel. One student declined the grant as his university paid for his conference expenses. Students receiving a travel grant were required to submit a short report on their conference experience and expenses. Overall the responses were positive, with students gaining valuable insight into the industry and making important connections that will help them in years to come. The summary report from each student was provided to NSF as part of the final project report, providing additional insight into the results.
