The Wireless Innovation Forum Announces Annual Award Winners

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Wireless Innovation Forum announced today winners of its annual Achievement Awards. Ettus Research took home Technology of the Year, Communication Research Center Canada won the award for International Achievement and Terry Anderson won the Presidents’ Award. Winners were announced at SDR’10 Technical Conference and Product Exposition, the premier event for the reconfigurable radio community, on November 30 in Washington, D.C.

“Reduced Complexity Soft MMSE MIMO Detector Architecture”

The Technology of the Year award is presented to an individual or organization for a breakthrough product or technology in the field of Software Defined or Cognitive Radio as nominated and selected by the Forum members. Ettus Research’s Universal Software Radio Peripheral product family has been the most important enabling technology in the field of software defined and cognitive radio research for the past five years. In producing and supporting a highly versatile, low-cost RF front end, Ettus Research has made the field accessible to a broad range of researchers, encouraging a new generation of radio experimenters and bridging the gap between the simulation environment and real-world demonstrations. Today, the USRP family is used by researchers around the world in applications from handset tracking in shopping centers to genetic-algorithm-driven cognitive radios and fully-functional GSM BTS deployments. Low cost, combined with an open source approach where everything including schematics, firmware, drivers and FPGA and daughterboard designs are available, makes the USRP product family the most accessible RF front end available for software-defined and cognitive radio research today.

The Forum International Achievement Award is presented to an individual, group of individuals, or organization that made especially significant contributions to international furtherance or acceptance of Software Defined or Cognitive Radio as nominated and selected by the Forum members. From the very beginning of SDR, CRC has been at the forefront of developing SDR standards, proselytizing the benefits of SDR throughout the world, educating opinion makers and developers throughout the world about SDR, and developing technologies that can be used by programs throughout the world. CRC has been making significant contributions to the SCA specification since the very beginning. They made the very first international change proposal to the JTRS program, which was significant in the early days since it demonstrated the SCA was interesting to more than just the US DoD. CRC has also been credited for proposing the use of ports/connections and the OMG's CCM XML file format. CRC has submitted over 25 change proposals to the JTRS program, many of which have been included in the different releases. In 2000, CRC created one of the very first Core Framework implementations, that of SCAv0.3, which had not even been released publicly yet. This work was used by CRC to submit many crucial change proposals (e.g., ports/connections and XML file format). In 2002, CRC was the first organization to be funded by the SDRF for technical work when it created the SCA Reference Implementation and released it open-source (SCARI-Open). In 2004, SCARI-Open went through JTAP testing and obtained an incredible success rate for testing; everything was accomplished in only six days, which had not previously been done. The SCARI-Open has been downloaded several thousand times from worldwide organizations (educational, research centres, SDR consultants and radio manufacturers). SCARI-Open has contributed to the emancipation of the SCA inside and outside the US DoD market. In 2002, CRC made the first demonstration of an SCA commercial waveform at the SDR'02. The waveform was a Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) receiver running in real time on a 1Ghz laptop. Year after year, CRC has travelled the globe to make technical presentations about the SCA. CRC is a regular invited speaker at the IQPC's SDR Europe Conference, SMi's International Software Radio Conference, IDGA's Radio summit and the SDR Forum Technical Conference. CRC has trained over 600 engineers in 16 countries on how to use the SCA to build radios and has been the largest promoter of the SCA and the SDR Forum throughout the years. They joined the Forum in 1999, and Claude Belisle served as a member of the SDRF/WInnF Board of Directors for several years. CRC has also been involved at the technical level within the SDR Forum. Claude Belisle chaired the Technical Committee and various work groups, and Steve Bernier has chaired and co-chaired SCA related work groups as well as being a major contributor to different technical work groups. CRC has attended the vast majority of the working sessions and has the largest team dedicated to SDR/SCA, and that allows CRC to make significant contributions year-round. In short, CRC has been one of the industry's most prominent supporters of SDR/SCA for the last 10 years.

Terry Anderson of ITT Technologies won the Presidents’ Award, chosen by the Forum’s Board Chairman and presented to individuals in recognition of their sustained outstanding contributions in support of the Wireless Innovation Forum and its activities. Mr. Anderson played a key role in supporting international collaboration between the members of the Forum and the JTRS JPEO in establishing the next version of the Software Communications Architecture (SCA), a draft specification for which was recently released. For several years, he chaired the SCA API working group that explores APIs related to the SCA and developed supporting documentation and tools for implementers of SCA. He has also served on the SCA Evolution Work Group (SCA Next), which has been evaluating change proposals for the recently released JTRS JPEO’s SCA Draft Specification. Since these initial deliveries, the SCA Next group has continued to develop new contributions for the SCA Next working panel, including contributions from the European ESSOR program and other international partners. Mr. Anderson’s efforts have directly supported the Forum’s Advocacy and Commercialization strategic goals and have strengthened the relationship between the Forum’s members and the international SCA community.

In addition, awards were given for the top two papers presented at the conference: “Reduced Complexity Soft MMSE MIMO Detector Architecture” by Kiarash Amiri of Rice University, Chris Dick of Xilinx, Raghu Rao of Xilinx, and Joseph R. Cavallaro of Rice University; and “Collaborative Adaptation of Cognitive Radio Parameters Using Ontology and Policy Approach” by Shujun Li, Mieczyslaw Kokar, David P. Brady and Jakub Moskal, all of Northeastern University. The winners were selected through extensive peer review from the top papers in the conference. The top papers will be published in a special edition Springer journal.

Winners were announced at the Wireless Innovation’s annual Technical Conference and Product Exposition, SDR’10, which brings together world-class business and technical leaders from around the world across commercial and civil organizations including service providers, operators, manufacturers, developers, regulatory agencies and academia. The event, held November 30 through December 3 in Washington, DC, featured more than 100 high quality technical presentations over four days from industry, government, and university experts, as well as a Product Expo with companies from all across the value chain and a Technology Showcase with more than 20 product demonstrations.

Platinum sponsors include General Dynamics C4 Systems, Harris, Indra and L3 Communications. Gold sponsors include Agilent Technologies, General Dynamics C4 Systems, Pentek and Xilinx.

To learn more about the benefits of Forum Membership, visit our web page.

About the Wireless Innovation Forum

Established in 1996, The Wireless Innovation Forum (SDR Forum Version 2.0) is a non-profit mutual benefit corporation dedicated to driving technology innovation in commercial, civil, and defense communications worldwide. Members bring a broad base of experience in Software Defined Radio (SDR), Cognitive Radio (CR) and Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) technologies in diverse markets and at all levels of the wireless value chain to address emerging wireless communications requirements. To learn more about The Wireless Innovation Forum, its meetings and membership benefits, visit www.WirelessInnovation.org.