Jonsson School Industrial Advisory Board IAB Committee on Telecom Engineering

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Jonsson School Industrial Advisory BoardIAB
Committee on Telecom Engineering

• Bill Krenik, Lorne Hinz, Andrea Fumagalli
• May 2, 2008

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Curriculum Development and Training

• Not enough telecom engineers to hire
• One company alone evaluates tens of students each
  year
• Present course content not adequate
• UG students not aware of technology
• Old image of the TE program
• TE name alone not appealing
• Public unaware of job opportunities

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Action Items

• Present an accurate and appealing image of the TE
  program
• Create awareness about solid job opportunities in
  telecom
• PPT charts for presentation to high
  school/transfer students
• Posters for schools and recruiting events
• Revise course content and consider seminar series
  with speakers from industry (mandatory attendance
  of students to access internship programs)

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Research and Industrial Collaboration

• Lack of research focus across TE faculty

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Action Items

• Improve communications and strengthen
  collaboration across Labs
• IAB sub-committee to suggest TE focus
• Lorne Hinz
• Marion Lineberry
• Ron Jennings

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TE Focus Motivation

• UTD TE needs a research focus to attract
  attention, students, faculty, researchers,
  funding, and build large telecom test-bed
  facility
• TE IAB needs research results to justify member
  participation (IAP)
• Projects that impact business direction
• Projects that UTD researchers do can more
  effectively than companies can do themselves
• Key to attracting industry funding
• Students that become top employees

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TE Focus Objective

• Conduct research to enable
• high-quality voice calls
• no static, no echo, no background noise, no
  dropouts, no dropped calls, no latency, ...
• high-quality data/video delivery
• no jitter, no blur, no audio dropout, no
  compression artifacts, ...
• Affordably, anywhere and under any conditions
• In a hyperconnected world

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TE Focus Obstacles and Constraints
Technology Successors to WiMAX, HDTV, LTE Multi-frequency, multiple standards Transition to all packet networks Merger of wired-wireless backbones Hyper-connectivity Business Reduce CAPEX and OPEX costs 100 network availability Non-business-critical use is driving new uptake and volume Wireless broadband anywhere home, car, office, plane, train, etc.
Social/Political Impact of aging population in developed countries Billions of new users in undeveloped countries High burst rate usage patterns Environmental Weather and natural disasters Mobility and multipath Virus or terrorist attack prevention, detection, isolation, mitigation, recovery
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TE Focus How It All Might Fit Together
TE Research Center
Directorship
TE IAB

• Funding
• IAB members
• Grants
• Contracts

Voice program
Data/Video program
Data/Video program

• Research Group
• Project1
• Project2

• Research Group
• Project1
• Project2

• Research Group
• Project1
• Project2

• Research Group
• Project1
• Project2

• Research Group
• Project1
• Project2

• Research Group
• Project1
• Project2

Facilities (Labs)
Support Staff

• Hard IP software, boards, boxes, silicon,
  silicon design IP, documentation, ...
• "Soft" IP trade-off analyses/reports, white
  papers, conference papers, patent filings
• Industry good will student familiarity with IAB
  products, student employment

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TE Focus Summary of Benefits

• IAB members can introduce new customer
  care-abouts as desired outcomes (or remove old
  ones)
• IAB members can introduce new problems/obstacles
  they have encountered or expect to encounter
• Both UTD researchers and IAB members can
  introduce promising new research areas to pursue
• All of the outcomes (papers, demos, educated
  students, etc.) can be tied to a common theme
  (the high level scope of the TE center), thus
  building momentum project on top of project
• UTD TE facilities become more attractive for
  investment as a test-bed for trying new ideas
  under real-world (or future world) stress
  conditions