NYU WIRELESS is pleased to announce that graduate researchers Fraida Fund, George Kyriakou and Oner Orhan have advanced to the next round of the DARPA Spectrum challenge. The DARPA Spectrum Challenge seeks to spawn the development of radio protocols that can best use a radio communication channel in the presence of other dynamic users and interfering signals.  The “Challenge” pits radio protocols from different universities in a head-to-head competition in a structured testbed environment. The contest does not seek to develop new radio hardware, but rather attempts to find strategies for guaranteeing successful communication in the presence of other radios that may have conflicting co-existence objectives.

Fund, Kyriakou and Orhan designed and implemented a software-defined radio pair (transmitter and receiver) that transmits data effectively in the presence of interference, with limited prior knowledge of the wireless surroundings. Of the 90 teams originally involved in the competition, NYU WIRELESS was one of only 15 teams to advance to the next round. In the upcoming stages of the challenge, all of the teams who advanced will compete “tournament-style” against the radios of the other teams. In addition to bragging rights, the winning team could win as much as $150,000. All of us at NYU WIRELESS have our fingers crossed for this talented team of students!