Following is a list of the most recent articles on ITTC that have appeared in local and area publications. For a complete list of ITTC
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From University Relations -- 04-10-2008
By Jill Hummels
A University of Kansas student is among a select group of students nationwide to receive a 2008 Science Mathematics And Research for Transformation (SMART) Defense Fellowship.
Mike Wasikowski, a master’s student in computer science from Omaha, will receive a $25,000 stipend, book allowance, health insurance and full tuition and fees as part of this Department of Defense program.
"Mike is a hardworking and brilliant student," said Xue-Wen Chen, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science who is guiding Wasikowski on his graduate studies and research activities at KU’s Information and Telecommunication Technology Center. "I was impressed by his motivation and sincerity toward work. He is dedicated and has great potential in research."
As part of the program, fellowship recipients must fulfill a one-year employment obligation with a Department of Defense agency for each year they receive the fellowship. Wasikowski, who is studying machine learning algorithms and feature selection techniques, will work for TRAC-Monterey, a research center at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.
"The specific organization that I’m looking at does a lot of research on projects like automatic target recognition -- looking at a large image of, say, a battlefield and trying to pick out areas that are potentially hazardous such as missile silos," he said. "You need to know where you have to look to figure out if there’s something there in the first place. They’re also working on robots that can adapt and learn depending on the environment or what they experience. Those sort of techniques would be very, very beneficial to them."
Getting a SMART fellowship requires, well, some smarts.
The extensive application process, which begins in the fall, requires each candidate to submit detailed academic information, letters of reference and information about his or her research interests. Successful candidates also must endure two rounds of reviews by personnel within the Department of Defense, Wasikowski said.
"It’s definitely a load off my chest, knowing that I got it and that I don’t have to worry about where I’m going to be in the next couple of years, what I’m going to be doing," he said.
Wasikowski earned undergraduate degrees in math, computer science and psychology at Truman State University in Missouri in 2007. He said his career aspirations are still open.
"I plan on spending at least three years there to get my feet grounded and get some good work experience," he said. "If it’s something that I really like, I might stay there."
Wasikowski is the son of Larry and Teresa Wasikowski of Omaha and a graduate of Ralston (Neb.) High School.
First awarded in 2005, the SMART fellowship program is designed to promote the education, recruitment and retention of students in science, math and engineering studies. Wasikowski is the second KU School of Engineering student to receive a SMART fellowship since 2006.
"This scholarship is very competitive-- so it speaks a volume about our program, our research, and our students," Chen said.
From The Washington Post -- 08-16-2007
The FCC should allow unlicensed use of unused TV band spectrum, when and if the technology is ready.
COVETED BITS of the radio spectrum called "white spaces" -- unused areas of spectrum wedged between licensed TV channels -- may soon be freed up by the Federal Communications Commission. Right now no broadband devices are allowed to use these parts of the spectrum, but the FCC is considering whether to let companies sell FCC-certified wireless devices that would be used without an exclusive broadcast license in these slivers of bandwidth. Such white-space devices (WSDs) would be low-power and so would emit signals over very small geographic areas.
White space within the TV band is unlicensed, like WiFi, but is physically better suited than WiFi for broadband transmission. Given the innovation that WiFi access has spurred, as well as the potential for broader coverage both in rural areas and in urban community wireless networks (such as the free WiFi network in Dupont Circle), the FCC has already decided to allow WSDs that are fixed in one location starting after TV's digital transition in 2009. The more controversial issue the commission is considering is whether to also allow portable WSDs, which could be used in products such as laptops or personal digital assistants. Portable WSDs are more difficult to design because they'd need to instantaneously identify which channels are being used in different regions.
To test the feasibility of such devices, last year the FCC started soliciting designs for devices that can identify unoccupied channels and then transmit wireless signals that don't interfere with licensed broadcasts. Two prototypes, submitted by Microsoft and Philips, recently failed to meet the proposed sensing and non-interference requirements, the FCC says. Microsoft is disputing the test results for its prototype.
Broadcast companies (including those owned by The Washington Post Co.), afraid of potential interference from WSDs, are lobbying against use of white space. Groups such as the Association for Maximum Service Television have argued that the FCC should never allow portable WSDs because the failure of these recent prototypes proves no portable WSD technology could work without destroying TV as we know it.
Certainly the FCC shouldn't approve WSDs that will obliterate TV. But just because these prototypes fell short doesn't mean the technology can never work. The limited success of these devices and another designed at the University of Kansas certainly gives hope that someday a non-interfering product could exist. After all, low-power wireless microphone operators often already use white spaces for similar short-distance broadcasts without a license -- although they're supposed to get licenses -- and they coexist peacefully with TV stations. (Wireless microphone operators also oppose sharing white spaces with unlicensed Internet service providers.)
Given the good that could come out of using this unoccupied bandwidth, the FCC should continue to encourage WSD research and development.
From Lawrence Journal-World -- 06-05-2007
By J-W Staff Reports
The Information and Telecommunication Technology Center and its tech-minded personnel at Kansas University will be the focus of a networking event set for 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. June 14 at the center, 2335 Irving Hill Road on KU’s West Campus. Sign-in and networking begin at 3:45 p.m., and the program begins at 4:30 p.m.
Participating in short presentations and a tour of the center will be Victor Frost, Keith Braman, Gary Minden and Joe Evans, who will review activities that range from future wireless networks to sensor network systems.
The center, with about 45 researchers and 135 students, works to develop innovations in IT sectors such as bioinformatics, telecommunications and radar systems/remote sensing.
The event is being organized by the Lawrence Technology Association and ITKC, a program of the Enterprise Center of Johnson County.
Cost is $15. For more information, click on www.itkc.org or contact Diane Adams at events@itkc.org.
From Computerworld -- 04-16-2007
By Gary Anthes
At a time when news of advanced technologies seems dominated by the likes of robots, nanogadgets and supercomputers on a chip, the subject of radio might seem a tad boring. But software-defined radios and cognitive radios hold promise for making our wireless networks far more powerful and useful.
Andrew Lippman, who leads the Viral Communications Group at the MIT Media Lab, sums it up this way: "The real core of the idea is not to regard radios as individual, discrete units, but as members of a community."
His idea stems from several related concepts. One of them, software-defined radio (SDR), is all about replacing much of the hardware in radio frequency devices--cell phones, GPS units, wireless laptops--with software, giving them unheard-of capabilities. For example, an SDR could morph from a cell phone to an FM radio receiver to a GPS receiver as directed by its user or even a remote party.
Cognitive radios go a step further by being aware of their environments. The most important application in the near term is to enable a wireless device to automatically and rapidly hop from frequency to frequency looking for uncongested slices of the radio spectrum. And cognitive radios can learn: Your GPS-equipped cell phone might remember that it has encountered dead spots along a certain street and then seek an alternate communication path the next time you are there.
Lippman says cognitive radios in a local area can work on an ad hoc basis with one another rather than taking direction from a central router, server or cell tower. They can "vote" among themselves--dynamically, and based on local conditions such as hot spots and dead spots--to determine the clearest and most power-efficient route for a signal to travel. The radios act like bucket brigades for messages, and the closer they are to one another, the lower their power requirements are and the less interference they generate. And since the radios add spectrum capacity even as they use it, the network "can scale almost without bound," Lippman says.
He calls this kind of arrangement "a virtuous cycle," which explains this way: "An analogy is a wedding--as more people attend, there are more conversations, but each one is softer, so they don’t interfere. Most current systems are a wedding where everyone uses the PA."
Fluid Dynamic
Lippman is working on another application, called "fluid voice." "Think about it as a party line where all the phones in an area can hear what anyone else is saying," he says. "You have phones now where you push to talk, but this is push to listen. It allows you to think about communications in a different way." Firefighters responding to an emergency could use fluid voice so if one of them got into trouble, he could "shout" a call to all of his colleagues without having to pause to tell the device who he wanted to contact.
But users of fluid voice would also be able to communicate with just a few other users on the party line. "Think of the user interface as being a screen with a dot for everybody you could be listening to," Lippman says. "The closer to the center you move the dot, the louder they become. If there is somebody you don’t want to hear, you push them to the edge."
Photo Caption: CogNet, funded by the National Science Foundation as part of its "future Internet" program, is a project to develop wireless communications protocols for cognitive networks. In the network pictured here, radio frequency devices, such as cell phones or wireless laptops, share information about their capabilities, positions, errors and signal strength in order to autoconfigure and optimize the performance of the network as a whole. They also coordinate channel-hopping to idle portions of the spectrum. The "supernode" serves as a gateway to other networks such as the Internet. Or it might connect a police department’s virtual private network with a Red Cross VPN. The technologies listed in the gold box coordinate activities across the protocol stack, provide services such as name and address lookup, and implement policies to, for example, give nodes incentives to forward traffic to others.
Source: University of Kansas
Joseph Evans, a computer science professor at the University of Kansas, is involved in research in a similar area. In his CogNet project, he hopes to develop open-source radio protocols that can be used to build cognitive wireless networks that are adaptive and agile. For example, Evans says, such a network might work in broadcast mode to warn residents of a city about an approaching hurricane. After the hurricane strikes, the network might quickly morph into one that provides a dedicated secure channel for emergency workers.
While cognitive radio works at the physical layer--by varying things like frequency and modulation--CogNet would span layers of the communication protocol stack. Explains Evans, "The application may say to the network layer, 'I want you to be a broadcast channel,' and the radio then tells the physical layer to make my cell phone network behave like it’s FM radio. In other words, ring everyone’s phone and tell them to get out of the way of the storm."
The Moore’s Law-driven ability to put a lot of processing power into small, cheap devices, coupled with the replacement of hardware with software, opens up many promising new paths for radio, Lippman says. "For years, we have tried to make the simplest possible receiver so people could afford them. So we piled all the intelligence into the transmitter," he explains. "But now the whole engineering basis has turned around. It’s suddenly feasible to put lots of processing in consumer radio."
From Lawrence-Journal World -- 03-30-2007
By Mark Fagan
A California company that makes containers for storing and dispensing liquids ranging from fuels to medicines is getting some help tracking its products by using technology developed at Kansas University.
Container Technology Inc., of Santa Barbara, Calif., is licensing the KU-Tag, a radio frequency identification system developed through the Information and Telecommunication Technology Center at KU. Another licensing agreement also is in the works with a company in the Kansas City area.
Proceeds both will help address a critical need in the container industry and pump additional money into ITTC, which will use the money to finance additional research.
"It’s substantial," said Keith Braman, the center’s associate director for intellectual property. "This has a potential to be, for the terms of the agreements, several million dollars."
RFID systems are used to track inventory by identifying tagged items through radio communication between electronic readers and tags that contain data on microchips. Such systems are used widely for tracking dry goods, but liquids and their containers have proven more problematic.
Certain radio frequencies are obstructed in such conditions, as metals block radio waves and liquids absorb them.
The KU-Tag, specifically designed to function in such conditions, solves this problem with four patent-pending technologies developed by Dan Deavours, an ITTC research assistant professor. The tag system incorporates foil and plastic to keep the tag’s antenna isolated from metal or fluid, therefore extending the range for reading.
An estimated 1.7 billion RFID tags will be sold worldwide this year, for a total of $4.96 billion, according to IDTechEx Ltd., a consulting firm. In 10 years the market is projected to reach $27.88 billion.
Deavours confirmed the shortcomings of existing RFID systems during testing. So he came up with the KU-Tag, which he said works anywhere from 20 percent to 80 percent better than other tags used with metals and liquid.
"Container Technology’s customers need to track containers and the material in those containers," Deavours said, in a statement. "RFID makes that practically automatic. The KU-Tag gives them all the performance they need."
From RFID Journal -- 03-19-2007
By Beth Bacheldor
Container Technology is testing passive RFID tags on its reusable liquid containers and drums so that its customers can better track the whereabouts of those containers within their supply chains.
The container manufacturer, headquartered in Santa Monica, Calif., has been looking into RFID for the past four years, and has just started testing its technology, SmartTrak, with two of its customers, which are chemical manufacturers based in the western United States, according to Gary Clancy, managing director with Container Technology. At the customers' request, Clancy declined to identify their names.
SmartTrak uses the KU-Tag passive UHF RFID technology licensed from University of Kansas’ Information and Telecommunication Technology Center (ITTC), which develops technologies in RFID, telecommunications, information systems, bioinformatics and radar. SmartTrak also includes an RFID portal that uses RFID interrogators chosen to meet each individual customer's needs, software that aggregates the RFID read data, and design and implementation services.
Complying with the EPC Class 1 Gen 2 air-interface standard, the KU-Tag was developed for use with metals and liquids and has been tested to provide read ranges of up to 20 feet--important features for Container Technology. The company's liquid containers--which include 55-gallon drums that can cost between $50 and $80, and 330-gallon totes that can cost between $500 and $800--are large and require wide portals or gateways, so the interrogator antennas may not be close to the tags. "We’ve looked at a lot of tags," Clancy says. "The thing with the KU-Tag is the read distance. For passive tags, the read distance this tag offers is really state of the art."
Container Technology inserts the tags in clear, plastic covers to protect them from sunlight’s damaging ultra-violet rays and then uses adhesives to affix the RFID tags to the sides of the drums and totes.
Many of Container Technology's customers, including the two that are testing RFID, currently track their drums and totes using bar codes. But bar codes require line of sight in order to scan the number from the bar code. "As many of our customer's containers are drums and larger, bar coding becomes an issue due to read distance," Clancy says. "To be efficient, [our customers] need to read a container while it is on a forklift truck entering or leaving a loading dock."
Also important was the ability to provide consistent read ranges in either empty or filled containers. Liquid can interfere with RF waves and disrupt an interrogator's ability to read a tag. The KU-Tag includes a rectangular microstrip ("patch") antenna and a foil ground plate, with a plastic substrate that separates the foil from the antenna in the middle. The foil ground plate is a thin metal sheet that serves to isolate the antenna from any other metal or fluid that can lower the read range of RFID tags.
At dock doors at the two customers' sites, Container Technology has installed interrogators so containers can be scanned to document when they enter and exit the facilities. During testing, expected to last about 90 days, Container Technology is working with the customers to measure read rates and other data to see how well the installations work. If all goes well, Clancy says, the companies plan to extend the tests to full implementations.
Ultimately, Clancy believes, Container Technology's customers may want to incorporate interrogators throughout their plants so they can track where containers are during the packaging processes. "To incorporate this technology into the packaging/filling connection systems within a manufacturing plant could prevent the wrong product from being packaged," Clancy says. In addition, he says the chemical makers may also work with their customers so that those companies can track the containers when they arrive and are then shipped backed for refilling.
From Lawrence Journal-World -- 03-02-2007
By Jonathan Kealing
Kansas City, Mo. -- It’s not always about athletic competitions when the universities of the Big 12 Conference get together.
As part of National Entrepreneurship Week USA, the Big 12 Center for Economic Development, Innovation and Commercialization--an experimental group organized by the 12 university presidents and chancellors, referred to as CEDIC--held a summit meeting Thursday to discuss ways that universities can get their inventions out of the research lab and into the marketplace.
Each university brought three emerging technologies to present to a panel of experts, including venture capitalists, business people, attorneys and fellow academicians.
Kansas University brought three of its most well-known innovations, including its new radio frequency identification tags, the Actifier and technology that could fundamentally change the way HIV is treated.
Jim Roberts, vice provost for research at KU, said the KU community could benefit from the discussions about technology and research that came out of the event.
"We need to be thinking about how our alumni are going to help us play in this game," Roberts said.
He mentioned the potential for donations to a research fund, similar to one operated at Purdue University, as one way alumni could help improve the quality and quantity of ongoing research.
Jim Laufenberg, president of ImmunoGenetix, was one of the three presenters brought to the conference by KU. ImmunoGenetix holds the license on technology that fights HIV that a KU researcher developed. Laufenberg said he’s in the process of looking for a pharmaceutical industry partner to take on the work his company has done.
"My role is as the baton passer. I take the baton from the university setting to the industry setting," Laufenberg said. "We’re raising money to investigate the drug process and have human trials."
Laufenberg said the drug his company is working on is probably 12 to 18 months away from establishing a partnership with a pharmaceutical company, at which time true clinical trials are likely to begin. He said he was interested in getting some feedback from the panel.
Steven St. Peter, a KU graduate from Wichita who is now living and working for a Boston venture capital firm, was among those on the panel quizzing and critiquing Laufenberg’s presentation.
"There are great companies in this region," St. Peter said. "Maybe one or two of these companies will nail it, but they all will contribute to the process."
The venture capitalist said he was doing most of this as simply "pro bono work," but he acknowledged he was keeping an eye on companies coming out of a region he may have to be more interested in over the next year.
"This is a pretty sophisticated group," he said.
Ron Kessler, one of the founders of the Big 12 CEDIC, said he wanted the event to help take some of the complexity out of technology transfer. Kessler said he’d measure success of the event based on the number of conversations that happened Thursday that otherwise wouldn’t have occurred.
"We’re going to have to do a real evaluation, but it seems those conversations are happening," he said. "We’re going to get feedback about doing more of these events."
Kessler said the Big 12 is the only athletic conference promoting academic and economic development.
From Lawrence Journal-World -- 02-28-2007
By Jonathan Kealing
The entire spectrum of invention and innovation was on display Tuesday afternoon at Kansas University.
Several organizations at KU staged the event to offer students and community members a better idea of how an idea can become a viable commercial success.
Exhibits included the unmanned helicopter from Viking Aerospace, innovative Radio Frequency Identification tags from the KU Information and Telecommunication Technology Center, and even a model of a spine that doctors can use for training.
"We tried to get things people could either touch or see, instead of your standard scientific poster," said Jim Baxendale, director of technology transfer and intellectual property in the office of the vice provost for research. "It’s all about getting people to know what’s out there."
Baxendale said he had helped put on a number of similar events in the past, but this one was unique in that it appealed to a much broader audience, particularly students. The event was at the Burge Union in order to be in proximity to the law, engineering and business schools.
"We want to create awareness of the inventions and innovations and technology coming out of KU, as well as the start-ups coming out of KU, too," he said.
Representatives of Viking Aerospace, a local business composed almost entirely of faculty or graduates of KU, said their unmanned helicopter had attracted quite an audience.
With an outer covering of bright silver brushed metal, the helicopter stood out as one of the largest items on display. It’s one of the first applications of unmanned aerial vehicle technology for the civilian market, said Richard Colgren, the company’s vice president.
"We’ve designed and built this for a real hole in the market," he said. "One of our customers is thinking about using it to survey disaster sites."
Colgren said other uses could be to look for hot spots in a house fire, or to map power lines or remote areas.
The helicopter weighs only 15 pounds and can fly for up to an hour.
Also popular were the RFID chips, from KU’s Information and Telecommunication Technology Center. These particular chips were designed to fill another market niche, said Michelle Ward, the center’s marketing coordinator.
The chips, which are smaller than some other RFID chips displayed, are capable of transmitting through metal or liquids, which can disable traditional chips.
Ward said she’d spent a lot of time answering questions.
"I think a lot of people have heard of RFID and they’re not sure how it works," she said.
The Entrepreneurship Fair was a joint venture of several KU groups and was scheduled in conjunction with national Entrepreneurship Week, which runs through Saturday.
Copyright © 2007 by the University of Kansas