# Report on university course based on DARPA Spectrum Challenge

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/report-on-university-course-based-on-darpa-spectrum-challenge/234167>\
**Category:** GNU Radio\
**Created:** [February 11, 2015, 9:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/report-on-university-course-based-on-darpa-spectrum-challenge/234167 "2015-02-11T21:17:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![addis\_a](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/c4cdca/32.png) [@addis\_a](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/addis_a)\
**Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 9:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/report-on-university-course-based-on-darpa-spectrum-challenge/234167/1 "2015-02-11T21:17:49Z")

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Hi all,

I was a participant in the DARPA Spectrum Challenge last year. Inspired  
by  
the Challenge, I developed a new course in which students learned about  
wireless communications and software radio in the context of a Spectrum  
Challenge-like competition. It was offered for the first time in Fall  
2014  
at the University of Thessaly, Greece, to a group of about 20  
undergraduate  
and masters students in the Department of Electrical and Computer  
Engineering. Since the course may be of interest to some in this group,  
I  
am sharing more information about it here.

The infrastructure for the course (lab materials, software radios,  
compute  
devices, software and other utilities) were hosted by WITest  
[http://witestlab.poly.edu/site/index.php](http://witestlab.poly.edu/site/index.php), the GENI wireless testbed at  
the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering.

In the first half of the course, students studied wireless communication  
and software radio basics through lectures and guided lab exercises. On  
their midterm exam, 50% of the points were earned by answering questions  
from this mailing list  
[http://witestlab.poly.edu/respond/sites/hy448fall2014/files/hy448-midterm-exam.pdf](http://witestlab.poly.edu/respond/sites/hy448fall2014/files/hy448-midterm-exam.pdf)  
🙂

In the second half of the course, students (in teams) developed software  
radios and competed against one another in a format similar to the  
Spectrum  
Challenge. Students also presented their designs in a poster session  
attended by other faculty in the department. Two prizes were awarded:  
one  
for “the best innovative idea” from among the designs implemented for  
the  
competition (selected by the faculty committee), and one for the team  
that  
won the tournament.

The results (tournament visualizations, student posters, photos) are  
available on this page  
[http://witestlab.poly.edu/respond/sites/hy448fall2014/page/hy448-design-challenge](http://witestlab.poly.edu/respond/sites/hy448fall2014/page/hy448-design-challenge)  
for interested readers.

I’d be happy to answer any questions about this course.

Best,

Fraida F.  
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering  
NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering

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**Author:** ![Fraida\_F](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/839c29/32.png) [@Fraida\_F](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fraida_F)\
**Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 10:04am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/report-on-university-course-based-on-darpa-spectrum-challenge/234167/2 "2015-02-12T10:04:27Z")

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Fraida,

this is very, very cool! As a former university guy myself, I very much  
enjoy people getting creative and thinking outside of the “industry  
standard software” box.

Any chance you can have the students directly answer these questions on  
the mailing list, and in time? 😃

Another suggestion for something that you and other department folk  
could do to get more exposure is to set up a github organization  
account. At CEL, we used that to publish our own free software projects  
and encouraged students to contribute – I dare say we have helped the  
one or the other student with their job applications by providing a  
publically visible platform on which their work can be found.

Cheers,  
M

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**Author:** ![Fraida\_F](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/839c29/32.png) [@Fraida\_F](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fraida_F)\
**Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 11:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/report-on-university-course-based-on-darpa-spectrum-challenge/234167/3 "2015-02-12T11:23:35Z")

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Farida,

Nice work.  
I believe your students will also be interested in IEEE spectrum sharing  
challenge [1].

[1]  
[http://dyspan2015.ieee-dyspan.org/content/5g-spectrum-sharing-challenge](http://dyspan2015.ieee-dyspan.org/content/5g-spectrum-sharing-challenge)

–  
Regards  
Sreeraj Rajendran

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**Author:** ![Fraida\_F](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/839c29/32.png) [@Fraida\_F](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Fraida_F)\
**Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 2:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/report-on-university-course-based-on-darpa-spectrum-challenge/234167/4 "2015-02-12T14:51:57Z")

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On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 3:16 PM, Fraida F. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> am sharing more information about it here.

[http://witestlab.poly.edu/respond/sites/hy448fall2014/files/hy448-midterm-exam.pdf](http://witestlab.poly.edu/respond/sites/hy448fall2014/files/hy448-midterm-exam.pdf)

> The results (tournament visualizations, student posters, photos) are  
> NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering

Great stuff, thanks for sharing!

Tom